After hauling CaiLeigh Anna for a bottom paint job and refurbishing of the feathering propeller in late July, I felt that the boat was almost ready for the Fall race season. The last service item to address was an engine overheating issue that occurred on our trip to and from Two-Way Boat Yard. After eliminating all other potential causes, I determined that I had a clogged heat exchanger. The heat exchanger works essentially as the “radiator” on inboard diesel marine engines.

Flushing the heat exchanger to remove mineral deposits is a fairly simple service item, but in the process of removing the hoses I broke off one of the copper fittings on the heat exchanger. This required me to remove the heat exchanger and bring it home to have repaired at a local radiator shop in Augusta. The result of this was that we missed the first race of the season on September 20.

The Golden Isles Sailing Club’s Fall 2015 racing season includes five club races and one offshore race from St. Simon’s Island to Amelia Island, Florida. Boats are separated into three competing classes depending on their size and design. CaiLeigh Anna, a Catalina 34, competes against other cruising boats in the mid-30’ size in Cruising Class B. Skippers are allowed to drop one race results for the club races for the series, and the winner is determined by the low point total. The offshore race against Amelia Island Sailing Club is a stand-alone race between the Golden Isles Sailing Club and Amelia Island Sailing Club.

For the second race of the season on October 27, I was joined by Mike Harris, and high school racing team members Stefan and Griffin as crew. Mike is an excellent sailor, past commodore of the Golden Isles Sailing Club, and advisor to the high school sailing team. This is the second season I’ve used high school racers as crew members on CaiLeigh Anna, and I can’t say enough about how positive an experience it is for everyone involved. I was thrilled to have Stefan and Griffin on board for the first time. We realized very early into the race that despite a recent bottom paint job, CaiLeigh Anna couldn’t keep up with the faster boats in our class. While our finish was disappointing, it was a great day of sailing with a wonderful crew.

The third race took place on October 18 with Joe back onboard along with Stefan and Julian from the high school racing team. The forecast was for 25 mph winds with 35 mph gusts, so we put in one reef on the mainsail as soon as we left the dock. We also reefed the furling genoa headsail to about 75%, but at times we still had to spill the wind in an effort to control the weather helm and keep the heeling down. This was the strongest wind I’ve sailed or raced CaiLeigh Anna in since purchasing her. It’s good to know that the boat will handle this kind of wind, but I wouldn’t call it fun sailing or racing. Frankly, it was a relief to get back to the dock without damaging the sails or boat. My days of enjoying sailing in gale force winds have passed, especially on my boat! I could just see the dollar signs flashing before my eyes with every gust. One blown out sail could mean thousands of dollars to replace.

Our next race was the always popular Florida- Georgia Ocean Challenge race between Golden Isles and Amelia Island Sailing Clubs on October 24 with Joe and Pat back on board as our regular crew. The race is contested on a 26 miles course between St. Simon’s Island and Amelia Island. Despite a very good start, I was slow deploying our spinnaker and we fell behind from the early part of the race. After finally getting our spinnaker up and trimmed properly we actually closed on the leaders until passing marker StA, approximately midway, at the entrance to St. Andrews Sound.

As the final leg of the race became an almost dead downwind run, we fell behind the leaders and finished last in our class. Our spinnaker is cut for running downwind, but off the wind and not dead downwind. We had a choice between following the shorter rhumb line to St. Mary’s Channel at a reduced speed or sailing off the wind and out to sea but with greater boat speed and distance. I gambled for the shorter course but it didn’t pay off as most of the boats sailing the longer course finished well ahead of us. After the race we did learn a new technique of how to maximize the asymmetrical spinnaker when running downwind by moving the tack of the spinnaker past the bow and into the wind using the whisker pole. We will certainly try this on the next race.

We had already decided to miss the fourth race in early November since I had family obligations as did Joe and Pat. Joe and I planned to race the final event on November 11, but the race was cancelled early Sunday because of a building weather system across the coastal area that was predicted to turn into a Nor’easter. At this point the Fall racing season was essentially over.

Click here for video of the Fall Races.


Even though our race results were disappointing, the fact that there were only three boats in our class and because we had actually participated in more races than another boat, we earned second place in our class for the Fall Series. Joe and I are convinced that my sails are “tired” or stretched out and thus preventing us from developing enough speed to be competitive with the faster boats. I do have another mainsail that appears to be in better condition that the one on the boat, so we will switch over to this sail next Spring.

Older sails designed primarily for cruising just aren’t good enough to use for competitive racing. But new sails for CaiLeigh Anna are out of the question at this point. We know that we’re competitive on spinnaker runs, so we are hopeful that the other mainsail will help us find some upwind speed. I also have a lightweight headsail that needs to be converted over from a hank-on to a furled sail. It’s possible that this sail will help us on light air racing days.

It was a fun season of sailing and racing even though the results weren’t as good as desired. In the big picture, it was just 14 months ago that we took CaiLiegh Anna off the dock for the first time, so there has actually been a lot of progress since then. We are having fun, but we’d have a lot more fun with another ¼ knot of speed!