Wisdom from Bruce Golison

Bruce Golison is the organizer of the prestigious Golison and Golison Race Week in Long Beach. Bruce is a multiple Santana 20 National Champion.

As a new Santana 20 owner for the second time over a 22 year period, I was asked to share my thoughts on coming back to the class and how it compares to other sailing that I have done over the past 22 years.  Actually for the past 5 years, I have not done much sailing with an active young son at home. 

This year I decided to get back into the class with a long time friend of mine, Steve Washburn for several reasons:

1. I wanted a new challenge after sailing in the Cal 20 class for the past ten years. 
2. I wanted a boat that I could travel with. Experiencing different locations, new competitors and varied sailing conditions makes for a great time. Combine this with making new friends in different locations and you have a wonderful experience.
3. Steve and I have young sons who we want to get into sailing and Steve's eleven year old in particular was ready to try racing with spinnakers.

Once we decided to get a new boat, Steve and I had to decide what kind of boat to get. Prior to my getting a Cal 20, I had campaigned a J/24 for eight years. Our J/24 travels took us from Key West, to Sydney, Australia, to Seattle, to San Francisco and to the Texas Circuit (a series consisting of regattas in Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Ft. Worth, Corpus Christi and Shreveport, LA). One year we actually put over 40,000 miles on our trailer! The J/24 provided us with great competition and life long sailing friends.  Since racing the J/24 successfully takes a crew of five, and they can't be your young children, that boat didn't fit into our current equation. The Melges 24, although a wonderful class, possed the same issues regarding having our young kids race with us. Remembering the fun that I had had with my first Santana, I started to do some research on the class.

I was happy to learn of a "rebirth" in the class and that there were active fleets around the western states.  The fact that there were good sailors competing in the class was also very important to us. Combing these factors with the fact that our kids could race with us, the Santana 20 was our choice!

We decided to get a new boat so that we would have all the developments of the class built right into the boat. We wanted to be competitive "right out of the box". This proved to be a great decision. Tom Schock has done a great job keeping the production boats up to date with class innovations. Combine this with the latest construction techniques and our boat was fast from the first time we stepped on board. At the just completed nationals, we sailed with an absolutely stock Santana 20 right off the Schock production line, and placed second! I would recommend a new boat to anyone.

Bruce Golison
Hull #919