By Cal State Long Beach’s sailing team plans on cruising their way to the finish line at their upcoming competition in Hawaii.
The University of Hawaii at Oahu will be hosting the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference Coed Championship from April 26 to 27, marking the second time the sailing team competes in Hawaii.
Five team members are planning to travel to the two-day competition. Since the competition will take place in the middle of the semester, Team Captain Mark Ryan said that he and teammates John Hill, Anna Rubino, Nicholas Santos and Tyler Web only plan to spend four days there.
After more than a 20-year hiatus, the sailing team was resurrected in 2010 by CSULB alumni and brothers Chase and Shane Young, who have been sailing since they were young boys.
“We have travelled a lot for only being back four years,” Ryan said. “We have been to the east coast three times [as well as] China and Hawaii before.”
With very limited funding and no formal coaching, the team organizes its own practices and raises the majority of funds to travel to competitions, Ryan said.
“Everyone has a voice and we share sailing tips, tricks, strategy and tactics with each other,” Ryan said. “The goal is to build everyone’s sailing skills up together.”
In July, the sailing team travelled to China to compete against 20 collegiate teams from China, Taiwan and Singapore, where they swept the competition and won all seven races they competed in.
In Hawaii, they will compete against teams in the PCCSC, including UC Santa Barbara, Southern California, San Diego State and Stanford, Ryan said.
He said the team will be competing in a traditional boat college teams sail in during competitions, which is a CFJ. The boat is sailed by two people, the skipper and a crewmember, he said.
The team held a restaurant fundraiser at California Pizza Kitchen, last month and plans on raising more money from a Chipotle fundraiser, a car wash and a letter writing campaign to sailing team alumni and the local sailing community.
They need to raise $5,000 to travel to Hawaii, team treasurer Nicholas Santos said. To date, Ryan said, they’ve raised $1,300, which is about a quarter of the funding.
“[The money raised] will cover travel and the rooms for the trip,” Santos said.
Students interested in joining or supporting the team can visit the CSULB Sailing Team page on Facebook. The team meets from 1 to 4 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on Naples Island, adjacent to the Boy Scout’s Base.
“Everyone is welcome to learn how to sail, that is how most of the team learned,” Ryan said. “We’re a really relaxed small group that like to escape the classroom, homework grind and the city streets and enjoy having some fun in the sun.”
