Nov. 4, 2008
November is here and the Navy intercollegiate sailing team's championship season is in full blow. While the Mids are not as busy with the number of regattas now as they have been the past few weeks, the stakes have now been raised and every event they sail now has greater implications. With how well the team has sailed of late, Navy is well positioned heading into these important events and the Mids continued their string of strong finishes in three different challenging events this past weekend.
Six Midshipmen traveled to Cornell for the War Memorial Regatta. This event serves as the fall season dinghy championship for the Mid-Atlantic region and is the single biggest factor in the strength of our schedule for the 2009 calendar year. All of the top teams in MAISA brought its A teams to compete and Navy needed a strong finish to counter a weak showing at last year's spring championships. The team delivered, finishing second out of 18 teams, just five points behind Georgetown. Andrew Vann, Christina Chance and Clark Hayes came in first in a stacked A division while Robert Vann and Juaquina Soland finished second in B. Saturday was a great day of sailing with the wind blowing down the lake out of the north at a solid 10 to 15 knots and eight races were completed per division. Sunday proved to be much lighter and only two more races were contested. The second-place finish at the regatta was Navy's best at the event in years.
Navy also had the opportunity this past weekend to test our skills against New England's best in the Schell trophy at MIT. The Charles River served up its usual challenging conditions for NEISA's fall championship. Navy finished 10th out of 18 teams at this very deep event. Martin Sterling and Sara Burke finished ninth in A division while Tim Murphy, Caroline Lockett and Saverio Maldari were seventh in B.
In preparation for the sloop qualifier next weekend, Navy also competed in the J 22 East Coast Championship. Jason Carminati, Andrew Hotchkiss, James Allsopp and Nat Sabatt finished sixth overall out of 16 teams.
Next weekend, Navy will compete in the MAISA Fall Women's Championship (hosted by Navy), and the MAISA Sloop Championship at SCYC in Oyster Bay, N.Y.
# GO NAVY #
