Rain and lack of wind may have led to the cancellation of Sunday sailing across the Northeast, but it did little to stymie the Bulldogs, who performed well above expectations in two major intersectional regattas Saturday.
The nationally ranked No. 2 Yale women’s team finished second at the Women’s Joe Duplin Trophy at Tufts, while the coed team, led by top women’s skipper Molly Carapiet ’06, finished fifth overall in the Boston Dinghy Cup, hosted by MIT and Harvard.
For the women, Emily Hill ’07 and crew Meghan Pearl ’06 finished second in A division, while Kendra Emhiser ’07 and crew Natalie Kitchen ’05 finished third in B division. The pair of freshman skippers got off to a strong start, leading the regatta halfway through the day, but consistency problems as Saturday wore on cost them the first-place finish, Emhiser said.
Nevertheless, Emhiser and others said they were pleased with the women’s team’s performance.
“This was definitely one of our best regattas,” Emhiser said. “We proved, especially at the beginning of the day, that we could keep up with the top women’s teams in the Northeast.”
Meredith Killion ’05, who captains the coed team, said she, too, was impressed by the women’s finish, especially considering the fact that Carapiet was sailing the coed regatta this weekend.
“We got second and still didn’t send our best women’s skipper to the regatta, which I do not think any other school can really do,” Killion said.
While Hill and Emhiser were dominating at Tufts, Carapiet and the rest of the coed team were sailing in the four divisions of the massive Boston Dinghy Cup.
The BDC, as it is popularly know, features four divisions of boats instead of the normal two. In addition, this year’s regatta featured three different types of boats in each division, as opposed to the one class of boat found in most standard regattas and intersectionals.
Carapiet said she was very pleased with how the team performed, especially given the youth of the four skippers Yale sent to the regatta.
“One of the biggest coed intersectionals of the spring, so we were happy with getting fifth,” Carapiet said. “We all made some mistakes that are pretty fixable, but I think that experiences like these are really what is going to take us to the next level.”
Carapiet and her crew, women’s captain Jenn Hoyle ’05, finished sixth of 14 in A division in the regatta, considered one of the most competitive of the spring season.
Phil Stemler ’07 and crew Killion finished eighth in B division, while Eivind Karlsen ’06 and crew Courtney Cox ’06 finished fourth in C and Matt Barry ’07 and crew Hannah Oakland ’07 finished fourth in D.
Barry said Yale’s performance at the BDC might help it regain a top-20 national ranking.
“It was a great showing for us,” Barry said. “It should definitely help us in our rankings — we were extremely pleased with the result.”
The team could have done even better given a second day of sailing, Barry said.
This weekend continues a string of spring successes for the Yale women, who started the season on March 6-7 with a fourth place finish at the University of Southern Florida intersectional. They finished second of 17 at the Women’s Intersectional at Navy March 13-14, and third of 10 at the Women’s Emily Wick and fourth of 10 at the Women’s Sloop Shrew, both of which were held at Harvard on the weekend of March 27-28. The coed team kicked off its intersectional season somewhat less auspiciously, finishing 10th of 16 at the Owen Trophy at Brown the same weekend.
Yale has also seen some team racing action already this season, finishing fifth of six at the team racing invite at Brown March 6-7 and sixth of 10 at the Marchiando Team Race at MIT March 27-28.
In the Southern Series Two, which Yale hosted Saturday, the Bulldogs finished fifth of 10, with Mike Renda ’04 and Deniz Ozgenc ’04 finishing seventh in A division and Erik Hayward ’04 and Nell Larson ’05 finishing fourth in B division.
Carapiet said she thought this weekend was a great success and the team was off to a great start for the spring sailing season.
“It was a really big team effort,” Carapiet said. “The team worked really well together both this weekend and last weekend.”