Catalina 22 Racing Tips
If you are new to racing or have some prior experience, here you will find articles with tips about how to prepare your Catalina 22 and crew to race at a Class regatta or at your home sailing club.
If you are new to Catalina 22 racing at a national, regional or local/club level, you may want to check out North-U for their excellent training videos and seminars.
Go to NORTH-U.
North-U offers training resources about racing rules, sail trim, and racing tactics.
Racers in the Catalina 22 community know Hal Smith as an individual who has graciously served as the PRO for many of our Catalina 22 National Championship Regattas. As a US Sailing Certified National Race Officer, our Association has been blessed with his continued support and race management expertise.
Did you know that Hal Smith is also a former Catalina 22 National Champion? Hal and his wife Sally won the 1981 Catalina 22 National Championship Regatta. Did you also know that Hal served on the Board of the Catalina 22 National Sailing Association as Rear Commodore? He also owned the North Sails loft in Atlanta. When it comes to racing a Catalina 22, Hal Smith is a wealth of knowledge.
If you are new to Catalina 22 racing, you may want to read a series of ten racing articles that Hal wrote back in the late 1980s and early 1990s in a column for MainBrace titled "The Leading Edge - How to Begin Sailboat Racing for Fun and Personal Growth". The articles are available in PDF format for you to easily access, download, print, and save. Although the articles are 30 years old, the concepts remain valid today. Articles are listed in their original sequence of publication (#1 thru #10), and it makes good sense to read them in this order.
THE LEADING EDGE #1 - SAILING IN CLEAN AIR
THE LEADING EDGE #2 - HOW TO BEGIN SAILBOAT RACING FOR FUN AND PERSONAL GROWTH
THE LEADING EDGE #3 - UPWIND TO THE WEATHER MARK
THE LEADING EDGE #4 - REACHING TO THE JIBE AND LEEWARD MARKS
THE LEADING EDGE #5 - UPWIND THE SECOND TIME
THE LEADING EDGE #6 - DOWNWIND
THE LEADING EDGE #7 - THE FINAL LEG
THE LEADING EDGE #8 - JUST DO IT!
THE LEADING EDGE #9 - STARTING TACTICS
THE LEADING EDGE #10 - COMMITTEE MEETNG AND INSTRUCTION
Catalina 22 racers Justin Chambers and Doug Thome of Catalina 22 Fleet 58 on Lake Lanier, Georgia, have won eight CatalIna 22 national championship titles - more than any other skipper / crew in the Class. A very important part of their success is practice. Justin and Doug sail a lot of regattas every year and have developed a successful routine that works very well for them. Justin and Doug share the notes of their successful racing routine in the article "BUC-EE Catalina 22 Racing Notes" that is availlable here in PDF format for easy downloading, printing and saving.
Tell tales properly placed on your fore sail and main sail play an important role of providing feedback about sail trim and sail performance. Tell tales help you identify if you are pointing too high, not ponting high enough, or are in-the-groove and are maximizing the performance of your sails. Understanding how to read tell tales and adjust your sails appropriately is just one of many skills any Catalina 22 racer needs to develop.
Let's take a trip back in time to 1974 and enjoy a tell all article about Tell Tales written by Ray Fletecher. His article "Tell Tales Tell All" first appeared in the first editon of International Regatta magazine published in March 1974 (Tom Winans, Editor / Publisher). The article, presented here in its entirety from over 45 years ago, is available as a PDF document that you may easily download, save and print.
Read TELL TALES TELL ALL
Understanding the flags and signals used by a Race Committee can be confusing to anybody new to racing. Ted and Dora McGee have put together a Race Management Tools document (PDF) identifying the most common Race Committee flags and signals that will helpful to anybody racing in a Catalina 22 sanctioned regatta. The document also includes complete instructions on how to build a resource that you can use on your Catalina 22 as a competitor or if you are helping with Race Committee. This document has been updated to support the 2021-2024 Racing Rules of Sailing.
Written by Hal & Sally Smith
Editor: First published in MainBrace-Summer 1981. Hal and Sally wrote this article after they won the 1981 Catalina 22 National Championship Regatta.
The main reason we won the Nationals this year (1981) was that we simply sailed the best set of races we have ever put together. The motivation for this effort came from the extremely close competition among friends. Our Association can be very proud of the many strong friendship that exists among its members, and I believe this does a great deal to bring out the very best in us.
If you are new to racing a Catalina 22 and planning to race in this year's Catalina 22 National Championship Regatta, then you will want to make sure your sails will measure in.
There is nothing worse than spending time and money to attend the Nationals, only to find out your sails are not class legal and do not comply with the CLASS RULES.
To help new racers better understand how to apply the Class Rules and to measure their sails, a Catalina 22 Sail Measurement Visual Guide is now available in PDF format for easy downloading, printing and saving.
This article discusses the fundamentals of the rigging and crew management for the C-22 spinnaker, or "chute" as it is often called. The discussion topics include the C-22 spinnaker sail, rigging the boat, raising/lowering the sail, jibing, and the use of “crew cards” to define crew responsibilities.
The following rule is probably violated more than any other of the fifteen class rules. The reason being that most of the skippers and hardly any of the crew members even know that this is a part of the rules. However this is a situation that can bring on a protest from another competitor.
The correct position for a crew member while racing with the intent to keep all the weight to the high side is to sit with the back to the cabin with the legs hanging over the side of the boat. This is permissible because the torso is well inside the vertical extension of the sheer. Boats with lifelines do a pretty good job keeping crew members inside the vertical extension of the sheer, but without lifelines there is no restriction to remind the crew that they are hiking beyond the limits of the rule. A good way to remember “is the body of the crew or the skipper in the boat or out of the boat”.
