r/sailing

I’ve been sailing in San Francisco since August. Catalina 320. I’ve taken ASA 101, 103, and will be taking 104 soon. I’ve chartered boats a few times, and am feeling pretty comfortable and competent generally operating a sailboat and doing so safely.

However, every time I get out under sail, I really have very little intuition for what to do about my sail trim. I’ll trim or ease the main and jib based on my point of sail, but if you were to ask me, for a given point of sail, am I over or under trimmed, I would have no idea.

Was sailing the other day and the telltales on my mainsail weren’t flying at all, and I couldn’t tell you why.

I think I’m generally a fast learner but the complexity of sail trim is pretty overwhelming. Luff tension, leech tension, boom vang, traveler, outhaul, jib cars, don’t even get me started on twist..

How do you begin to tackle the problem of building an intuition for this? Is it just a matter of time on the water and experimentation? I’ve read the theory but it doesn’t really stick very well, at least not in an intuitive way that I can easily apply on the water.

Are there any good resources for this? Has anyone ever taken a dedicated sail trim class?

What nets do people use to hang fruit in cockpit or cabin on their cruiser?

I guess I am looking for wrong keywords as I don’t see good options

Honestly that's the whole question. I'm new to sailing with 1 full season as race crew under my belt and thinking of taking the ASA course series so I can charter my own boat sometime in the future. Will I regret not just saving the money and learning this stuff on my own?

I have been looking at used boats (mostly online) for a while now and once in a while, there has been a sailboat with a transom and sufficient deck space for use as a dive boat. I haven’t fully settled on this (vs. just a motor boat), but I would love to be able to combine both passions of mine. I am well aware of the limitations here, but I am still looking for any real world experiences from folks who have gone that route.

FWIW, I am located in Southern California and am planning to find a slip either way.