Despite a lack of wind to buffet its sails, the No. 12 coed sailing team recorded two strong finishes over the weekend.
The Bulldogs took fourth out of 16 teams at the 67th Annual Boston Dinghy Club Cup hosted by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Saturday and Sunday. On the first day, eight Eli sailors won at home in the Southern Series Two Regatta. The No. 15 women’s team struggled to a 12th place finish at the Joseph Duplin Trophy hosted at Tufts University.
Host Harvard, which won the A, C and D divisions, won the Dinghy Club Cup with a score of 104, 42 points ahead of Tufts. The Bulldogs totaled 210 points, 15 behind Dartmouth.
“The B.D.C. was a resounding success,” A division skipper and captain Stuart McNay ’04 said. “It would have been nice to beat Dartmouth, but it was great to beat Charleston and, as such, our national ranking should improve.”
The Bulldogs brought eight sailors to the Dinghy Club Cup, which is one of the largest regattas of the year, to compete in the four different divisions, A, B, C and D. Due to very light winds, which were as low as three to five knots at times, only eight races in each of the four divisions were sailed Saturday. Sunday, there was no wind and, as a result, no races.
“The event was sailed in light air, which has traditionally been one of our weaknesses,” McNay ’04. “So this is a great stride.”
The strongest performances of the day for the Elis came in the A and B divisions. In the A division, McNay and crew woman Kate Littlefield ’04 raced to a fourth place finish. The pair finished only 11 points out of first and nine points ahead of fifth place Dartmouth.
In the B division, skipper Isabelle Kinsolving and Meredith Killion ’05 took fifth place.
“It was the first regatta that Meredith and I have sailed together, and we worked well together,” B division skipper Isabelle Kinsolving ’02 said. “But I was disappointed overall, because we were winning after the first four races and then proceeded to have four terrible races.”
The Tufts’ tandem of John Birkett and Joel Hanneman were the only sailors to finish ahead of Harvard. The Tufts’ pair finished five points ahead in the B division of the second place Crimson. Skipper Arthur Kinsolving ’03 and Solta navigated to a seventh place finish in the C division.
“The conditions were definitely not ideal,” Solta said. “Arthur and I had a few difficult races when the wind became very light, but finished racing on Saturday strongly. We did well to maintain consistency overall.”
Harvard dominated the division winning five of eight races and finishing second in two of the remaining three.
The Bulldogs raced two coed teams in the Southern Series Two Regatta with the first team finishing first in both the A and B divisions. The second team took third in both divisions.
Light winds allowed for only seven races to be completed throughout the day. The Yale squad made the most of the opportunities they did have, though, as skipper Derek Keil ’03 and Jackie Wong ’04 edged Connecticut for first place in the A division.
In the third of the Yale sailors’ regattas over the weekend, the women’s team struggled to a 12th place finish at the Duplin Trophy. Skipper Grace McGeoch ’04 and Marie Bewley ’04 had the best finish of the regatta for the Elis taking 10th in the A division.
The coed team will look to build upon the strong finishes from this past weekend as they compete in the Team Racing Intersectional at Yale and the Southern Series Three at Brown this weekend. The women’s team will travel to Boston to compete in the Emily Wick Trophy.
Based on the team’s performance, Isabelle Kinsolving said she is optimistic about the team’s chances.
“We are a young team,” Isabelle Kinsolving said. “We might take the more established teams by surprise this spring.”
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