View Article
 
Current ArticlesArchive
« Back Post Date: Saturday, February 15, 2014
#seasquatchtakesonstraits

#seasquatchtakesonstraits
by Adam Ferguson

First time boat owners: check.
Hull number from 1976: check.
Short course competitor: check.

The Seasquatch has officially started her countdown to her first ever Southern Straits and us lowly owners have much to cover over our remaining prep days. We bought the boat around Labour Day. She has good bones, but her sail inventory and systems are tired. Besides gearing the “Squatch” for racing in general, not to mention PIYA and Offshore Special Regs, we need to do things as simple as register for a PHFR rating. Who knew it was relatively complicated to figure out if you need to register your sail number only with PHRF or apply for an “Offshore” sail number since, believe it or not, Catalina 27s are not an official racing ISAF Class.

Our motto has become “Beg, Steal or Borrow”, with many of our sailing friends and craigslist being invaluable resources. One of our first “donations” has been a used mainsail that, even with a small rip in the top panel, is in better shape than our current mainsail which looks as though it’s seen more years of flogging than it would care to recall. Our biggest order/purchase to date has been a new genoa to replace our mildewing headsail. I’m sure we’ll be like kids at Christmas when it gets delivered. Who knew someone could love new dacron so much!

One of our biggest gear challenges to date has been to keep perspective on the Squatch outfitting and remember that she is a 35+ year old racer/cruiser. Both of us sail on race-specific boats out of West Vancouver and have to manage our relative performance expectations. In the end this means that the only piece of carbon on our boat will probably remain a credit-card style bottle opener. Besides gear upgrades, we have also sketched out a laundry list of skills we want to have mastered and improved heading into the race so we can be safe and have fun.

We’re learning as we go with each idea for improvement needing to be tempered against a list of things we need to just fix. One of our continuing projects has been regaining function of our spinnaker pole. The jaws had been completely frozen and after a lot of brute force and sweat, we’ve opened up the ends but have yet to replace the springs or the lines for the topper or downhaul. A few library books later and we’ve purchased the line to splice ourselves; figures crossed our high school level Pythagorean theorem won’t fail us on the angles!

So far we’ve only seen the money leave our accounts, a trend that will no doubt continue! But, over the coming weeks our proverbial bounty of cam cleats, registration docs and sails will start making their way onto the Seasquatch. So why Straits? The race provides us the opportunity to test ourselves and the Squatch in a fun and competitive event. It provides us the opportunity to set specific goals both in preparation and in sailing, and to prove we can not only simply race, but enjoy the experience of competing and completing something together than will require the passion of our two –person crew from strategy session to finish line.

5854 Marine Drive
West Vancouver, BC, V7W 2S2
(604) 921-7575
LAT. 49 21.35N LON. 123 16.30W
Site Scripts
Hide Click to Edits:
FED Scripts
CWS & Content Load