SEPTEMBER 29, 2015: THE NEXT STEP IN SAILING

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

THE NEXT STEP IN SAILING

I am sorry I was AWOL for this last Tuesday night.  Sometimes vacations get in the way of important things.  I hope the sail and the barbecue at the yacht club went well.

  I know we all are having a blast competing on Tuesday night.  It doesn’t matter if you are battling it out for first or just trying not to be last, I sense we are all having fun.  It is also very apparent we are all bringing our game up and learning a lot about sailing and everything it entails: boat handling, sail trim, rules etc.  It is incredibly fun for me to see the novices at the beginning of the season, not knowing the rules and staying away from the clump of boats fighting for the start line.  By the end of the season, the start line gets very crowded as these novices learn and become more aggressive.  It does not hurt that we have an excellent contingent of sailors in our group for all of us to learn from. This is what our Catalina Tuesdays is all about, improving our sailing abilities.  What is the next step?

Why not progress to racing in a sanctioned regatta?  I would like to take this opportunity to ameliorate some of the fears that people may have about sanctioned regattas.  There are two things you must do before you can enter one of these sanctioned regattas.  You must get a PHRF certificate and you must have a sailing affiliation.

To get a PHRF certificate, you fill out a form from the Monterey Bay PHRF committee.  Forms are available at the yacht club.  On this form, you provide the particulars of your boat.  If you are a class boat like a Catalina most of the information is on file (length, beam).  The particulars for your boats are the sails you use.  What is the biggest Jib you use?  Are you a tall rig?  What type of prop do you have? You provide all of this data and turn the form in with $20.  This is renewable each year, so if you have made changes you can let them know to change your PHRF rating.  For my boat, I have a folding prop and use up to a 155 jib and my rating is 180.  PHRF is simply a way to compare your performance to every other boat. To put it in perspective, if I was racing against a boat with a PHRF of 0 and the race from start to finish is 1 mile. If I crossed the finish line 2 minutes and 59 seconds after the 0 PHRF boat, I would win the race by 1 second. 

Having a sailing affiliation is another necessary step to enter a regatta.  If you have not joined SCYC, now might be the time to do it.  It is usually only $1000 to join and $500 a year.  If you are not inclined to join SCYC, the least expensive way to establish a sailing affiliation is to join US Sail which is usually about $30 a year.

Any regatta you enter in Santa Cruz will be conducted by the Santa Cruz Yacht Club.  Sailors in Santa Cruz are incredibly blessed to have such a professional, dedicated group of people that work very hard to conduct races that are run incredibly well.  If you are a sailor living in the Santa Cruz area who is interested in improving their sailing and racing skills, to not take advantage of this opportunity does not make sense.  If you have been sailing on Tuesdays and been following this blog, you already know the rules, though diligence in following the rules may be a little more important in a sanctioned regatta.

Another thing that may seem intimidating to the uninitiated is the starting sequence.  All those flags and horns.  What do they all mean?  I will cover this in a future blog.

The season is winding down.  It is getting dark earlier, so let’s be early (but not OCS) to the start line.

See you out there next Tuesday.

Barry Keeler

Sailing Pair A Dice