Light, tricky winds and strong currents characterized the start of racing this weekend for the Bulldog sailors, but despite difficult starts and chilly rain, the Elis claimed the Ivy Championships for the second year in a row.
The sailors of the No. 3 co-ed team won the Ivy Championships this weekend with a strong second place showing at Owen Trophy regatta with 134 points. Meanwhile, the second-ranked Yale women’s sailing team placed third in its inaugural collegiate team race of the season at the Joseph Duplin Women’s 3-on-3 Team Race.
Yale received the Mosbacher Trophy, which is awarded to the top Ivy League finisher at the Owen Trophy, and the Knapp Trophy, which is awarded to either Yale, Princeton or Harvard based on their performances at the Ivy League Championship. Only Boston College bested the Elis overall with a strong score of 107 points. The second best Ivy finisher, Dartmouth, took eighth overall.
Sailing for the Owen, Mosbacher and Knapp trophies at the King’s Point, sailors split into two divisions Saturday – FJs and 420s – and each division hosted ten races. On Sunday, the divisions were reversed as sailors tried their hands on the other boat model.
Yale placed second in the Owen Trophy, which is awarded to the overall winner of the regatta and commemorates the founding of collegiate sailing. In the competition, the charter members of the Intercollegiate Sailing Association are invited to compete alongside Navy, Coast Guard and each founding school’s traditional rival. It is named after MIT professor George Owen, who designed the Tech dinghy – a boat still raced at Charles River events.
“Saturday there was a moderate breeze with a lot of chop and a fair amount of wake in the water, and on Sunday it was also pretty cold and rainy,” captain Thomas Barrows ’10 said of the poor conditions.
In the A division, Barrows and Blair Belling ’11 earned 69 points for a second place finish while winning five of their races, including the final two of the regatta. Joseph Morris ’12 and Grace Becton ’09 matched their teammates’ performance in the B division by placing second with a total of 65 points. The two finished in the top half of competition in every race and won three races.
“The conditions were really, really difficult – some of the hardest conditions I’ve seen since I started sailing in college,” Morris said.
He added, “Starts were probably the most difficult part of the race, and then we usually had a mediocre rounding at the windward mark. I think that just consistency and being able to grind back through the fleet were the keys to our success.”
Meanwhile, their teammates on the women’s team sailed Larks on Upper Mystic Lake at Tufts University and raced against seven of the top 15 teams in the nation.
“It’s a different type of race where instead of just having one boat per team you’re racing with three boats and trying to make sure that your team finishes with fewer points than the opposing team,” Kate Hagelmann ’09 explained about the format of the race. “It’s definitely head to head. You try to block the other team so that your team can get by.”
Despite constant rain on Sunday, Yale won seven of the 15 races completed in the weekend, and finished behind Boston College and Harvard. The format of the competition was a 10-team round-robin Saturday that featured one-on-one competition between schools followed by five consolation races and 12 gold fleet races between the top four teams.
“It took just a little bit of getting used to for some of us,” Rebecca Jackson ’10 said of the Larks. “They’re actually really fun boats. They can do really well in light breeze and you can really get going even if there’s a hush wind.”
Also this weekend, Yale sailors sailed FJs at the Boston Dinghy Club Cup on the shifty Charles River. Hosted by MIT and Harvard, the Crimson won the competition and Yale took ninth with 455 points. Cameron Cullman ’12 and Adriane Levin ’09 had the best finish for the Elis, finishing ninth in the C division at 136 points.
In the Southern Series Two event at Salve Regina, Eli sailors placed third with 130 points. The Saturday and Sunday event – half in warm sunny conditions, half in a damp fog – brought patchy, light winds. The Bulldogs took third in the A division and fourth in the B division with 59 and 71 points, respectively.
Next weekend, the Bulldogs will travel to Coast Guard and Connecticut College for the Southern New England Team Race and will host the Ferrarone Team Race at the McNay Family Sailing Center. The women will compete at the Women’s Brad Dellenbaugh Trophy hosted by Brown. Events start at 9:30 a.m. Saturday and continue through Sunday afternoon.
Christine Slomka contributed reporting.