Oct. 28, 2008
This past weekend, the Navy intercollegiate sailing team was extremely busy with 28 sailors competing in various events all over the East Coast. A weather system moved into the region on Saturday, creating extremely high winds at all of the events. The system moved through on Saturday night, leaving light and shifty winds on Sunday.
At the Hoyt Trophy at Brown University, the coed team had the opportunity to test its skills against New England's best and sailed another strong regatta, finishing third out of 18 teams. In this tough intersectional regatta, the Midshipmen sailed well in both divisions and handled the challenging conditions effectively. Martin Sterling skippered A division with Sara Burke and Bennett Geyer as his crew and finished in seventh place. In B division, Robert Vann sailed with Juaquina Soland and Clark Hayes to a second-place finish.
The Navy women's team traveled to Connecticut College to compete in the Stu Nelson Women's Regatta. In the heavy winds and strong currents, the team showed enormous skill in sailing to sixth place out of 18 teams despite capsizing in one race and getting stuck on the mark and having to jump in to free the boat in another. On Saturday, Navy's boats had another gear that many of the other teams didn't have and our women sailed their best regatta yet this year. Tina Pryne and Theresa James finished 11th in A division while team captain Trisha Kutkiewicz, Emily Taynor and Katherine Adler finished third in B.
At the MAISA Fall Open at Old Dominion University, Navy took the victory over 11 other teams on the strength of very strong performances in both divisions. The Midshipmen loved the breeze down at ODU on Saturday and opened up a solid lead before the winds got too strong and racing was called early for the day. When racing resumed on Sunday, the solid results continued as well as Navy was able to take second in both divisions to go along with the overall victory. Mac Fletcher and Caroline Lockett sailed A while Al Ravelo and Maggie Boyle manned B division.
Lastly, a team competed in the Kings Point Dinghy Open. Navy ended up finishing seventh out of 16 teams, with Mike Curran and Alice Hong coming in seventh in A and Hugo Roller and Joanna Lee finishing sixth in B. The team at Kings Point might have seen the most challenging conditions of any of Navy's teams this weekend.
The other event we competed in this past weekend was not a collegiate event, but was the Hillman Capitol J 24 East Coast Championship in Annapolis. This regatta was stacked with top-shelf professional talent and the Midshipmen who competed gained valuable keelboat sailing experience in advance of the MAISA Sloop Championship in a few weeks. Andrew Vann, Andrew Hotchkiss, Christina Chance, James Allsopp, Jason Carminati and Saverio Malderi sailed a strong regatta despite being new to the boat and the fleet and came in 31st overall out of 49 teams. The team could have done better, but it took a while to get their borrowed equipment set up correctly and they experienced a gear failure on Saturday that killed any chance of a good finish in the fifth race of the regatta.
Three other members of our team got the opportunity to compete in this event sailing with St. Mary's College alum Chris Gaffney. Tim Murphy, Nat Sabatt and Andy Kramer were the beneficiaries of a last-minute call for crew and helped Chris' team finish 42nd.
Next weekend, Navy will be competing in the War Memorial at Cornell, the Schell Trophy at MIT and the J 22 East Coast Championship at Annapolis YC.
# GO NAVY #
