Fighting through car problems and elite competition, the Eli sailing teams recorded three top 10 finishes over the weekend.

The No. 5 coed team steered its way to third place in the highly competitive Ted Ferrarone Team Race, while the No. 11 women’s team sailed to eighth and ninth place finishes.

The Ferrarone race, which was hosted at Yale, is set up differently than normal fleet race regattas. Instead of having each team racing a single boat in different divisions, each team sails three boats simultaneously against another team’s three boats. As a result, a host of blocking and varied positioning strategies, which are not used as often in the fleet races, are implemented by the competitors.

The Yale sailors compiled a 12-7 record, which was good for third in a field 10 teams. Dartmouth took the title with a 15-4 record, two wins better than Tufts’ record of 13-6.

“We did really well,” skipper Isabelle Kinsolving ’02 said. “We don’t team race much. It was the most intense team race we’ve done all year and it was really satisfying to do well.”

In contrast to the Bulldogs, Dartmouth and Tufts are very experienced team raciang squads.

But the Eli boats of skipper and captain Stu McNay ’04 and Margo Harrison ’03, Isabelle Kinsolving and Meredith Killion ’05, and skipper Arthur Kinsolving ’03 and Blanka Solta ’02 adjusted well to the unfamiliar format.

Sunday, the women took eighth out of 11 teams at the Sloop Shrew Trophy at Harvard. Boston College, benefitting from a hometown advantage, won the regatta, followed closely by Dartmouth and Brown in a tie for second.

Sailing larks in the A division, skipper Grace McGeoch ’04 and crewwoman Jessica Miller ’04 took ninth place, as did the duo of skipper Marie Bewley ’04 and Melissa Bailey ’04 in the B division.

Saturday, the Eli women took ninth out of 18 teams at the Emily Wick Trophy at MIT, despite A division racers Julie Papanek ’05 and Jenn Hoyle ’05 arriving late to the competition due to car trouble.

“We missed the first race of the day because our car was getting towed,” Papanek said. “Although that put us in a hole, I am really happy with how we performed.”

Brown won the Trophy by a narrow margin of two points over Boston College.

The pair of skipper Papanek and Hoyle still managed to take ninth in the A division, only six points behind third place Tufts. The duo won two of their races and took second in another. In the B division, skipper Sunny Larson ’03 and crewwoman Vinnie Raemy ’03 sailed to a 12th place finish.

This weekend, the Eli women will compete in the Moody Trophy at the University of Rhode Island.