The Yale sailing team found varying degrees of success at four regattas throughout New England this weekend.
The women’s team, ranked second in the country, placed first out of 18 at the Stu Nelson Trophy at Connecticut College. The coed team, ranked first in the country, placed fifth at the Hoyt Trophy at Brown, ninth at the Central Series 6 at Boston College and 14th at the 76th Annual Oberg Trophy, held at Northeastern. The races were 18-boat fleet races.
At Connecticut College, skipper Morgan Kiss ’15 and crew Natalya Doris ’17 sailed the A Division boat to four individual first-place finishes in the nine-race regatta. In the B Division, skipper Casey Klingler ’18 and crew Katherine Gaumond ’15 placed third overall.
The Bulldogs dominated on a river known for its difficult conditions.
“It’s a really tricky place to sail because the conditions there are really shifty,” Doris said. “We were pretty conservative, especially on the starting line. The current was a big factor. To compensate, we always made sure we were looking at big areas of strong wind. We were communicating a lot.”
After their first-place finishes — an improvement on their second-place finish at the Yale Women’s Intersectional Regatta last week — Kiss and Doris plan to sail together again next week at the Victorian Coffee Urn regatta at Dartmouth College.
The Yale sailors who headed north did not find quite as much success as those who remained in-state.
As the 2013 winners of the Hoyt Trophy, the Bulldogs sailed into Providence intending to defend their title. However, a strong performance by eventual champion Fordham and strong Sunday winds foiled the Elis’ chances at a repeat.
Skipper Ian Barrows ’17 and crew Meredith Megarry ’17 and Charlotte Belling ’16 placed third in the A division. In the B Division, skipper Joseph Kiss ’17 and crew Clara Robertson ’17, Belling and Emily Johnson ’16 placed 10th. The two boats combined for 165 points, placing Yale and Bowdoin in a tie for fifth, but the Bulldogs won the tiebreaker thanks to their two first-place finishes compared to Bowdoin’s one.
In Boston, Yale competed in B and C-tier regattas — less competitive races that, according to Claire Huebner ’18, have no bearing on qualifications to the Match Racing, Women’s Atlantic Coast and Coed Atlantic Coast Championships. All three regattas, the biggest of the fall season, are the weekend of Nov. 15.
“The lower-tiered regattas are good practice for younger sailors or less experienced sailors,” Huebner said. “You can build depth on your team.”
Huebner was the skipper on the B Division boat in the Central Series 6 race. She and crew Amelia Dobronyi ’17 placed seventh in the division. That, combined with skipper Eric Anderson ’16 and crew Chandler Gregoire’s ’17 eighth-place finish in the A division, was enough to land the Bulldogs in ninth place overall.
After six races on Saturday, Huebner and Dobronyi sat in fourth place.
“It was a really nice breeze strength for our weight and we were just doing a good job playing the shifts that came down the course,” Huebner said. “I hadn’t really sailed with Amelia before. I think we had pretty compatible boat handling, which was nice. We had some pretty good starts on Saturday.”
In the same city, the Bulldogs fielded three boats in pursuit of the 76th Annual Oberg Trophy. The boats combined for 579 points, leaving them in 14th place.
In the A Division, skipper Malcolm Lamphere ’18 and crew Sarah Smith ’15 placed 10th overall. Skipper Christopher Champa ’18 and crew Caroline Colwell ’18 came in 14th in the B Division. Meanwhile, C Division skipper Katharina Knapp ’18 and crew Isabelle Rossi De Leon ’17 placed 13th.
Again, the Bulldogs took advantage of favorable conditions on Saturday, but according to Champa, were impeded by the weather on Sunday. Champa said that the wind was volatile, both in direction and velocity, making the race difficult for the team.
“We sent a pretty young team to this regatta — all freshman skippers,” Champa said. “We didn’t do quite as well as we had hoped, but it was a good learning experience. We haven’t had as much experience sailing on the Charles, which is notorious for being a tricky venue. We took a lot away from it. Hopefully it will make us better.”
Next weekend, the women’s team heads up to Dartmouth College to race for the Victorian Coffee Urn, and the coed team will compete for the 74th Erwin Schell Trophy at the University of Vermont, the Dave Perry Trophy at Yale and the Nickerson Trophy at the New England Freshman Championship at Tufts University.
All races begin at 9:30 a.m.