Steady performances contrasted with finicky winds as the fall sailing season neared its end at the Freshman Atlantic Coast Championships this weekend. At this regatta, the Elis placed fifth over two days of competition.

The coed team sent racers to Connecticut College in New London, Conn. With 143 points, the Bulldogs placed fifth over the 12 races and two days of competition in FJs.

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In the A division, Cameron Cullman ’12 and Margot Benedict ’12 amassed 77 points for a seventh-place finish. The pair won one race and placed in the top five boats in five of their 12 races.

Genoa Warner ’12 and Jared Shenson ’12 placed fourth in the B division. The duo finished in the top five seven times over the weekend — a feat that contributed greatly to the 66 points the team earned on the Thames River. At the end of the first day, they were leading the regatta. However, the team failed to live up to the same level of competition on the second day of the regatta.

“The wind was out of a different direction and as a result it was very difficult to keep together your course and sail to tack,” Shenson said about Sunday’s weather. “It was much more of a tactical race than a speed race.”

Warner added, “The weather was pretty good. Saturday had north winds, strong currents but Sunday was much harder. The wind was shiftier and was coming out of the west.”

The unique feature of this regatta is that it solely featured the Atlantic’s best freshman sailors. Despite this different format, however, Shenson said that he knew the field. In fact, the B division skipper from Stanford was his own skipper in high school.

“It was fun because we were winning against him on Saturday,” Shenson explained. “But he pulled ahead on Sunday.”

Cullman agreed that the competition was fiercely familiar.

“I had grown up sailing with a lot of those guys,” Cullman said. “It was everyone I’ve been racing with my whole life. It was a cool way to see how people have been growing at different colleges.”

When asked how Yale seemed to compare, Cullman was quick to defend his colors.

“The Yale experience is the best,” Cullman said. “We definitely have been improving — it will be very exciting to see where our team can go.”

Next weekend, the Bulldogs take their last stand of the fall season at the Atlantic Coast Tournament at Harvard.