Inconsistent winds and freezing temperatures proved challenging for Yale sailing as the team spread out across the Northeast.
Three different events highlighted the weekend for the Elis. The women competed at the Brad Dellenbaugh Trophy hosted by Brown on Saturday and Sunday. Other sailors found themselves at the Southern New England Team Race hosted by the Coast Guard Academy and Connecticut College, while still others sailed at the Southern Series Three, hosted by Salve Regina.
The women finished sixth in the 19-team field, combining a 12th-place finish in the A Division featuring a boat of Jane Mackey ’09 and Marla Menninger ’10 and an impressive second-place finish in the B Division featuring skipper Kate Hagemann ’09 and crews Elizabeth Brim ’11 and Rebecca Jackson ’10.
Hagemann and company were winning the B Division after the first day but were unable to hold off St. Mary’s on the second day despite finishing in the top five in eight of 12 races and tallying three total wins.
Others spent their weekend at the Coast Guard Academy and Connecticut College. The Bulldogs and their competitors were seeded into two groups of nine on Saturday at the two sites. The top five teams from each location were then invited to Connecticut College to sail in the Championship Round.
Yale, with skippers Zachary Brown ’08, John Kempton ’10 and Thomas Barrows ’10, along with crews featuring Abigail Coplin ’08, Grace Becton ’09, Adriance Levin ’09, Emmet Smith ’09 and Mike Hession ’10, qualified for the championship races after a strong performance Saturday. The team worked its way into a respectable fourth place Sunday, having lost a third-place tiebreaker with Boston College and falling behind perennial powerhouses Charleston and St. Mary’s.
Hession said the team expects to see Charleston and St. Mary’s again throughout the season at team races, and possibly at Nationals if the Bulldogs qualify.
The final piece of weekend action came from the Southern Series Three fleet racing event at Salve Regina. The fifth-place finish for the Elis was charged by teams of Sarah Lihan ’10 and Blair Belling ’11 in the A Division and Molly Lucas ’11 and Hilary Shapiro ’11 in the B Division.
Saturday brought strong gusts ranging from 12 to 20 knots for the women and similarly harrowing speeds for the other sailors, who had to remain extremely vigilant of the conditions on both days of competition.
“On Saturday at Coast Guard, the wind was going down the river, so you would get big rolling puffs,” Hession said. “There weren’t any huge obstructions, so the wind could just roll in and out. Toward the beginning of the day it was pretty inconsistent, and then it built toward the end of the day.”
Sunday proved to be a bit calmer on the water, but winds still produced some significant waves.
The women will compete again this upcoming weekend at the Women’s President’s Trophy Intersectional hosted by Boston University, while other sailors will travel to the Friis/Marchiando Team Race hosted by Tufts and MIT, the Southern Series Four hosted by Salve Regina and the Admiral Alymers Trophy hosted by Massachusetts Maritime.