At the beginning of Spring Break, part of the UC San Diego Sailing Team took a short trip up the coast to Long Beach to compete in the North Designate Regatta hosted by USC. This regatta is one of the two regattas that teams must compete in to secure a spot in the co-ed Pacific Coast Championships coming up in April. On Saturday, we unloaded our 2 boats and the first rotation sailed out from the US Sailing Center to the turning basin right outside of Alamitos Bay Yacht Club to start off the weekend. The day was spent in very shifty wind conditions, leaving us guessing which way the next gust of wind might take us. Towards the end of the day, the wind began to pick up, but remained shifty, proving to be fairly difficult to race in. At the end of the day, we were exhausted, but rallied just in time to explore Huntington Beach.

The next day we were treated to breakfast by our wonderful hosts, who were the parents of one of our sailors. After being spoiled, we headed back over to Long Beach for day two of racing. It was just as windy, but less shifty, which made for some fun racing conditions. Overall, the weekend was a good start to Spring Break and we were able to make friends with more of the teams than before. Sailing is a small community, so it’s always nice to be able to grow closer in the smaller regattas. UC San Diego’s varsity team placed 16 and the junior varsity team was 25.