Club News


A Cat North Americans Kick Off in South Bay

By Emily Willhoft | October 06, 2017
Event Website

San Diego displayed a healthy amount of breeze for the first day of the 2017 A-Cat North American Championship. There are 32 sailors out in the waters of Crown Cove in South San Diego Bay competing for the title of A-Cat North American Champion. Today sailors finished the first three races of the four day event.

The first race of the day was abandoned due to Race Committee error- RC failed to signal which course was being sailed. While there was a lengthy discussion at Thursday night’s skippers meeting and a general agreement on which course to sail, not all the competitors were present at the meeting and no changes to the sailing instructions  were made. Therefore, RC abandoned the race and the first race that they scored started at 1pm. Races generally lasted 23-28 mins and competitors sailed course 2.

The breeze was between 7-12 knots through the day, progressing slowly to the right as the hours passed. At 3pm there was a big shift to the right and the course was changed for the final race of the day. RC reported that the fleet was very well behaved on the start line, with only one or two boats over in each race. 

A-Cats (an abbreviation of A-Class Catamarans) are very fast catamaran boats designed for singlehanded racing. Competitors are competing in two classes this weekend: the foiling class and the classic class. The difference between each class is that the foiling A-Cats come up out of the water while the classic A-Cats remain on the water when they move, similar to a normal boat.

Mischa Heemskerk (WSV de Braassem) leads after day one with Bruce Mahoney (Houston YC) right behind him. The always consistent Matt Struble (MBYC) is third after placing third in each of the three races.