The Yale sailing team continued its strong start to the season, with three individual sailors qualifying for the Singlehanded National Championship. In team competition, the Yale women’s team cruised to victory in the Amanda Trophy at Roger Williams, while the co-ed team finished second in the Chris Loder Trophy at MIT and fourth in the Stedman Hood Trophy at Tufts.

Three men, Ian Barrows ’17, Malcolm Lamphere ’18 and Nic Baird ’19, and one woman, Louisa Nordstrom ’20, competed in the New England Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association Singlehanded qualifiers at Connecticut College on Sunday. The top-five finishers qualified for the Singlehanded National Championships, which will be held in Galveston, Texas this November.

Lamphere, who won last year’s national championship, finished third to qualify as he seeks to defend his crown. Baird finished second, also earning a spot in the National Championship race, where he will look to improve on his seventh-place finish a year ago. Barrows finished eighth with 105 points, a mere seven points out of fifth, the final qualifying position. The overwhelming winner was Tufts’ Alp Rodopman, who finished with a stunning 44 points, 46 ahead of second-placed Baird.

For women, Nordstrom grabbed the fifth and final qualifying spot with 86 points, one point ahead of Brown’s Hannah Steadman. Boston College’s Erika Reineke won the race with 28 points. No Yale sailors qualified for the women’s finals last year.

“I’m super excited since it’s been a few years since Yale has been represented at the women’s singlehanded nationals,” Nordstrom said. “I’m really looking forward to the high level of competition at the event. A singlehanded regatta is a bit different since you have to make all tactical decisions by yourself. It’s also a lot more physically demanding.”

Singlehanded sailing differs from the traditional doublehanded format, which features two distinct roles. The skipper drives the boat, makes tactical decisions and trims the mainsail. The crew trims the jib, adjusts the sail controls and keeps an eye out for developments the skipper cannot see or might overlook.

Singlehanded racing is an individual event, requiring an entirely different approach from the sailor because of the longer course distance and different boat.

Baird and Lamphere will compete against each other at the Singlehanded National Championships at the end of the fall season.

“It always feels good to have teammates go and be able to support each other going into an event,” Baird said. “Having two [sailors] qualify definitely makes us more proud of our team. Even though singlehandeds is definitely an individual regatta and you’re very much competing against your own teammates, we still love seeing each other have success.”

Farther north, the Yale women’s sailing team eased to victory over second-place Vermont in the in-conference Amanda Trophy. KB Knapp ’18 and Claire Huebner ’18 finished in second place in the A division. Christine Klingler ’20 and Elizabeth Tokarz ’17 snagged a third place finish in the B division.

Despite not finishing first in either individual event, the Elis earned golden honors, winning by 18 points once the scores were totaled across the two divisions.

The Elis co-ed team narrowly fell to Tufts in the in-conference Loder Trophy, but beat out 16 other competitors to finish in second place. The Bulldogs were paced by freshman duo Dylan DiMarchi ’20 and Graceann Nicolosi ’20, who finished first in the B division. Veterans Chris Champa ’18 and Amelia Dobronyi ’17 ended up in fifth in a very competitive A division.

Facing unique wind conditions on Mystic Lake, the other contingent of the Yale co-ed team finished fourth in the interconference Hood Trophy. The Tufts team used their strong home-water advantage to full effect, coming out on top.

College sailing courses are generally on rivers or in bays, and lake sailing requires an adjustment that Tufts had much more experience making. The Hood Trophy also uses a different type of boat, the Lark, as opposed to the Flying Juniors and Z-420s used in most college races and the Amanda and Loder Trophies.

Skipper Mitchell Kiss ’17 and crew Clara Robertson ’17 finished in fifth in the A division for the Bulldogs. Skipper Nicolas Hernandez ’19 and crew Caroline Colwell ’18 brought the Elis a third place finish in the B division.

“I was happy with the weekend,” head coach Zachary Leonard ’89 said. “[We had] many excellent performances.”

The Elis’ focus will return to doublehanded sailing next weekend. The co-ed team sails in the Hewitt Trophy, the Danmark Trophy and the Southern Series and the women’s team sails in the Regis Bowl.