St. James Town Sailing Club’s Cat Program is an entry-level high-performance sailing program and a good opportunity to learn more about sail trim, apparent wind sailing and trapezing.

The Program follows the following structure of three (3) main helming categories:

• Cat Captain 1,

• Cat Captain 2,

• and Cat Examiner.

INTRO-TO-CATS CLINICS

Our Intro-to-Cats clinics are usually run throughout the sailing season by a volunteer catamaran community member, willing to support the cat sailing community and help the club members to tune their sailing skills.

We usually have someone driving the motorboat and four (4) of club's catamaran sailors volunteering their time as assistant coaches for the clinic. Our focus on the water is on clean tacks, gybes and sailing exercises to simulate safe docking and man overboard.

To obtain your Cat Captain 1 category, here is a checklist of skills the examiner would be looking from you during the clinic:

• Sign out and rig correctly,
• Guide the boat to the dock and secure it appropriately,
• Raise the mainsail and launch from the dock safely,
• Sail with you head up, looking where you are going (try to never look back and if you need to look at something inside the boat, glance briefly),
• Sail out and around a mark,
• Learn how to stop/park the boat,
• Gybe and tack,
• Get out of irons,
• Perform a man overboard maneuver without tacking (We use a lifejacket, it must be picked up windward of the boat),
• Perform a capsize recovery,
• Dock safely,
• Put the boat back on the ramp, and the equipment away.

Intro-To-Cats Clinics’ schedule for the day is usually as follows:

CAT OLD SALT TEST

New members who are CanSail Level 3 (Bronze Level IV) certificate holders may sign out a boat after successfully completing the Old Salt test by arrangement with the Vice Commodore and a Cat Examiner.

St. James Town Sailing Club’s Cat Program is not intended to be an extreme sailing program.