SAILING | ‘We inched them out by one point’

By
Staff Reporter
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The No. 3 coed sailing team took its second regatta in two weeks this weekend at the Nevins Trophy, while the No. 3 women’s sailing team finished in ninth place at the Mrs. Hurst Intersectional.

“We won by one point — it was a tough event,” Blair Belling ’11 said of the coed race. “Its kind of satisfying to win by just a little bit because you know the competition is great.”

The Elis also sent teams to the Hatch Brown Intersectional at MIT and the Central Series Two where the sailors finished 16th and ninth, respectively.

Hosted by the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, the Nevins Trophy Regatta saw 8 to 14 knot winds on Saturday and a lighter, shiftier wind on Sunday.

“I think that as a team we basically didn’t have any huge mistakes,” Joseph Morris ’12 said. “Each crew plugged away in their own division. Races that weren’t going so well we turned into OK races. No one had any deep finishes.”

The regatta featured three divisions: two double-handed FJ divisions and a single-handed Laser Standard race.

In the A division, captain Thomas Barrows ’10 and Belling finished in first place with 51 points. With 68 points, Morris and Marla Menninger ’10 finished fourth in the B division.

“The other teams were all the best teams in the country,” Morris said. “They hung with us the whole time, and then on Sunday we inched them out by one point.”

Claire Dennis ’13, in her first collegiate race, finished seventh in the C division. Sailing solo in a Laser Standard as opposed to the Laser Radial she usually pilots, the freshman posted two top-five finishes and one win in this men’s Olympic-class boat.

“It was exciting to see a freshman perform so well in her first college regatta,” Barrows said. “In high school and beforehand, she had been sailing Laser Radials which is the same boat but with a slightly smaller sail. She had a great regatta.”

Up east on the Charles River, two Yale teams raced in the greater Boston area.

The “infamously hard venue,” according the Belling, is one of the most difficult locales for collegiate regattas.

The Elis took 16th place at the Hatch Brown Intersectional at MIT with 659 points. Rob Struckett ’12 and Liz Brim ’11 sailed in the A division, and Andrew Kurzrok ’11 and Alexa Chu ’11 in the B division. Emily Billing ’13 and Heather May ’13 recorded raced in the C division and posted two top-five finishes.

Across the river, the Bulldogs finished ninth overall at the Savin Hill Yacht Club. Mike Hession ’10 had his skipper debut for the Bulldogs and, with crew Jared Shenson ’12, finished eighth in the A division. John Vrolyk ’10 and Aly Kerr ’12 placed tenth in the B division.

The women traveled to Enfield, N.H., to Dartmouth’s Mrs. Hurst Women’s Intersectional. As the first intersectional of the season, the regatta opened Saturday with chilly 40-degree weather and a strong north-northwest breeze. Sunday began even cooler with nonexistent winds.

The Elis placed ninth in the 10-race regatta with 173 points. In the A division, Rebecca Jackson ’10 and Margot Benedict ’12 took 13th. Unfortunately, their best race was discarded when a dying wind barred a race in the B division.

Skipper Genoa Warner ’12 and Stephanie Schuyler ’12 finished fourth in the B division, ending their weekend with two first-place finishes and a second-place finish.

Next week, the women race in the New England Singlehanded Championships in Laser Radials at Boston College on Saturday and Sunday. The coed team will compete in the Hood Trophy at Tufts University, the Southern Series Three at the University of Rhode Island and the Chris Loder Trophy at UNH. All races begin at 9:30 a.m.

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