The UC San Diego Sailing Team made one of the longest instate trips this past weekend to sail out of Redwood City, CA for Fall Women’s Pacific Coast Championships (PCC’s) and the Cardinal Invite held by Stanford. The team took a full women’s team and one co-ed team to represent UC San Diego in both regattas. These regattas are always very unique, because CFJ’s, the typical collegiate boat, and z420’s are both raced, giving teams the chance to try their hand at an unfamiliar boat. This year, the women’s fleet started out with the z420’s on Saturday and switched to CFJ’s the second day, whilst the co-ed fleet started with CFJ’s Saturday.

On Saturday, races had to be postponed as teams waited for wind to fill in. Teams were sent out to the race course in the harbor when there was just enough wind to sail in, but the first races were light and inconsistent. Later into the day, the wind began to pick up, allowing for decent, competitive races to be sailed. The first day the women’s fleet sailed 8 races and the co-ed fleet got in 10 races.

Sunday started out cooler than Sunday, but with just as little wind. Unfortunately, the wind did not pick up on Sunday, so the races were slow. To make the races more difficult, wind tended to shift a lot on Sunday, so the favored side of the course would suddenly lose all wind, and the other side would start to gain. Both Women’s PCC’s and the Cardinal Invite fleets were called on Sunday after only 4 races when wind completely shut off. However, this was good for getting a head start back down to San Diego.

Even though wind did not cooperate this weekend, the UC San Diego Sailing Team had a fun weekend of road trip bonding and singing songs out on the water. Our women’s team ended up 8th and our co-ed team was 15th. A big thank you to Stanford for hosting the regatta and letting us use their boats and boathouse!

-Robyn Gillum