April 22, 2009

This past weekend, the Navy intercollegiate sailing team traveled to the America Trophy Regatta, which is the coed dinghy spring championship for the mid-Atlantic. SUNY Maritime hosted the event this year and racing was conducted on the East River in the Bronx, where strong currents and shifty winds confounded the competitors on both days of racing. The top 18 teams in MAISA were on hand to try to earn the eight coveted spots in the national semifinals. Saturday was a beautiful day with sunny skies, seventy degrees and a 7-10 knot westerly breeze. Navy was solid in both divisions and was in second place overall after day one, just a few points behind host SUNY and a few points ahead of defending national champion, Georgetown. The top three teams were separated from the rest of the field. Sunday saw the wind lighter, the sky cloudier and the air cooler than the day before. In the light conditions, Georgetown showed why they wonnationals a year ago and pulled away from the other top teams. Navy and SUNY Maritime stayed close all day, with SUNY coming out on top by one point when it was all said and done. Andrew Vann and Christina Chance finished third in A division while Robert Vann and Juaquina Soland were also third in B. The team's third-place overall finish was easily good enough to advance to the semifinals, which will be held in Boston on May 2-3.

The other event Navy competed in over the weekend was the MAISA Spring open at Cornell. We decided to send our Women's team to this coed regatta to get some lake sailing experience in advance of the MAISA Women's Championship next weekend at Hobart and Navy's women didn't disappoint, finishing second overall out of 16 teams. Tina Pryne and Theresa James finished third place in A division while Trisha Kutkiewicz and Emily Taynor claimed the B division victory.

# GO NAVY #