The Yale sailing teams had mixed success in the Atlantic Coast Championship, their final major regattas of the autumn.

The women’s team finished third at the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championship Nov. 16-17. And the coed team finished seventh in the Atlantic Coast Dinghy Championships, also this weekend.

Molly Carapiet ’06 and crew Sarah Himmelfarb ’06 placed seventh in the A Division of the women’s ACC.

Carapiet said she attributed the finish to the great effort the team put into the race.

“We worked really hard this weekend, and we came back from a not-so-good day on Saturday,” Carapiet said. “Working together as a team allowed us to come out with such a strong finish overall.”

Carapiet placed second overall in the national women’s single-handed championships in Houston Nov. 8-10.

Julie Papanek ’05 and crews Courtney Cox ’06 and Marie Bewley ’05 did better than Carapiet and Himmelfarb in their races, finishing fifth in the B Division.

Papanek said it was the whole team, and not the sailing in any individual boat, that made the regatta so successful.

“Although we thought our individual performances weren’t amazing, it was really nice how as a team our discipline pulled us through in the end,” Papanek said.

The stats agreed with Papanek: despite finishing seventh and sixth in the two divisions, Yale was able to pull off a third-overall finish because of its remarkable consistency as a team. Only eight points separated Yale’s A and B divisions. Only two teams had a smaller margin between their two divisions: Old Dominion University, which won, and Cornell University, which came in dead last with consistently poor finishes.

Yale sailors also participated in the coed Atlantic Coast Championships at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London this weekend. Yale finished seventh overall in that regatta.

Stu McNay ’04 and crew members Kate Littlefield ’04 and Eivind Karlsen ’06 had a hard two days, finishing 10 of 16 A Division boats. Yale’s B Division was far more successful; Brandon Wall ’03 and crew member Meredith Killion ’05 finished fifth in their division.

McNay said the team was never consistent enough to compete for first.

McNay also said the switch in the A and B divisions’ fortunes corresponded to their switch from 420 boats during the competition; 420s are the boat class Yale practices with the most.

“We tend to have our strongest finishes in the 420 class because that’s the kind of boat we’re familiar with,” McNay said.

Meanwhile, the women’s regatta at Connecticut College was characterized by the domination of the first and second-place finishers, who prevented any other teams from achieving good individual-race finishes with any regularity. Old Dominion, which won the regatta, beat Yale by 79 points, while Brown finished second by a comfortable margin of 59 points. Both are huge margins in a sailing regatta. Nine of the 13 races run in A Division were won by either Brown or Old Dominion.

Sailing regattas are scored like track races, with the fewest points going to the first boat to cross the finish line. The victory goes to the team with the lowest point total. Each team enters a boat in boat fleets, A and B, in standard regattas. The team with the lowest total combined score from both the A and B divisions in the regatta wins.

Generally, each team sails in a different boat in each race, until each team has sailed in every boat. Thus, the number of schools present determines the number of races in a regatta. This boat rotation eliminates any advantage certain boats may have over other boats.