I have been sailing on a lot of different boats over the summer in California. I was more excited than most people might be when I got an invite to sail on a Catalina 37 for a Wednesday night race at Long Beach Yacht Club. I follow the Congressional Cup every year and as soon as I got to Long Beach I made it my goal to get racing on one of the boats, so when the opportunity arose I grabbed it.
The boats are pretty old and not very fast but there are 11 of them racing every Wednesday of the summer in Long Beach and it's pretty good racing. We raced in about 12-15 knots of breeze, decreasing throughout the evening (as seems to be normal for Long Beach). We had a good start, along with most of the rest of the fleet, so it was tough to know where we come out at the top mark. We rounded in the leading bunch, within touching distance of the leaders. As you would expect in close one design racing the positions changed frequently during the race. We managed to hold on to 5th across the line in front of Long Beach Yacht Club.
I really wanted to learn as much as I could about the boats, so I payed a lot attention to every little detail of how things worked on board. I was trimming the Jib Upwind and Kite Downwind. I liked the set up of the boats and I quickly learned how to get things done efficiently. I took some good boat notes after racing about what was working well and how to sail the boats. Hopefully I will get to put them into practice at a Ficker or Congressional Cup in the future.
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