Getting Started
Roadmap — Six
 With
racing experience, and an interest in buying a boat, you have two
goals: get some good racing as crew, and figure out what type of
boat to buy when you are ready.
The better a small boat racer you are, the more skilled a skipper
will be attracted to giving you a regular ride. There is more racing
available than you have time for: the club races about every other
weekend in the year, and the various classes have district circuits
that fill most of the holes in that for April through October.
All the fleets are interested in growing, so they will be interested
in making you welcome and help you figure out what you want to eventually
buy.
a)
Join CSC as an Associate Member.
An Associate membership is a low-cost alternative for non-boat owners,
which will give you access to all Club services and events, including
the newsletter and members-only portions of CSC's Web site.
b) Register on in the crew-finder.
(The list of available crew is visible only on the members-only
side of the web site. You also can do your registering there if
you are a member.) Reliable and experienced racing crew, particularly
ones whose racing is in small boats, or even know the details of
racing a particular class in the club, are in high demand.
c)
Crawl though the web site (carolinasailingclub.org) to get
a feel for club activities. (For later use, note that in the members-only
side there is a Rogues Gallery of names and pictures of all members
to help you put faces with names and vice versa.)
d)
Go to the next Third Thursdays
Social to start meeting members and get the lay of the land.
e)
Learn about the CSC Fleets.
Discussions with members will tell you what boats are actively raced
in the area. The CSC fleets include one-design classes that race
with crews of one, two, or three. They include both catamarans and
monohulls. Some are better suited to family racing, others to single
competition. Some are physically demanding and built for speed,
others are more forgiving. Each fleet has its own personality. The
fleet captains are listed in CSC Fleets.
f)
Identify with a CSC Fleet. You are
not only picking a boat type and fleet that will be fun to crew
on / sail with, but you are also probably selecting the type of
boat you will eventually buy. As an experienced racer you would
be attractive as crew, but you need to become known among the skippers.
A good way to do this is to focus on a particular CSC fleet. Get
to know the fleet members. Ask them to tell you about their class.
The Fleet Captain can be a helpful first contact. (See About CSC
Fleets.) The more fleet members you talk to, the more they will
recognize your experience and look for you when they need crew.
As you gain experience on that class of boat, demand for you as
crew will grow. Learn how best to rig and tune that class of boat.
Consider joining the fleet's national class association as an associate
or crew member. Many of these associations have Web sites, newsletters,
or other publications that provide tips & techniques for rigging,
tuning and sailing that class of boat. (If the class association
is not active, sometimes the builder has a Web site.) The CSC Fleet
Captain is likely to be able to tell you how to find written or
on-line resources for learning special sailing techniques for that
type of boat.
g)
Purchase a boat. In this process, the fleet members can be
a lot of help. They know what's available, what to look for, what
you should look for. They also know how to fix up or make changes
to the boat. Once you have the boat, then you are an experienced
racer with a boat, and you move to the next
list.....
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