The Navy Offshore Sailing boats sailed back into Santee Basin on Sunday night after completing their block 1 training in New England.
The team had five boats manned by 42 midshipmen compete in the Annapolis to Newport Race, the New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta and the Block Island Race Week.
Navy started its summer competition schedule at the 500-mile Annapolis to Newport Race where the Midshipmen won the SURFLANT Trophy for the best overall performance by a service academy team.
The race featured a number of challenges for the competitors, which included navigating through pea soup fog for more than 300 miles of the competition.
Navy had five crews compete in the event and in the 10-boat ORC 4 division, the skipper and XO pair of
Samuel Hall and
Kelly White led their crew aboard Integrity to a second-place finish while skipper
Meade Tolen and his XO
Luke Brodnik were seventh in the class aboard Defiance.
In the ORC 2 class, which featured 14 boats, the skipper and XO team of
Luke Gillcrist and
Cory Routen guided their crew on Ranger to finish eighth in the class.
Zachary Medeiros and
Gary Munsell on Wasp placed 10th while
Keegan Steele and
Cade Gelhar on Zephyr finished 12th.
In the race for service academy awards against crews from Merchant Marine Academy and Coast Guard Academy, Navy's team on Ranger led by Gillcrist and Routen won the SURFLANT Trophy, which goes to the best overall performance from a service academy team and is determined by time handicap system among the disparate boats. The crew on Ranger also won the Gerber Trophy for best performance by a Naval Academy boat and navigator
Joseph Garcia was awarded the Carey Arthur Trophy, which goes to the navigator of the top service academy boat.
At the New York Yacht CLub Annual Regatta, Zephyr skippered by
Keegan Steele finished 4th in their 13 boat class while Ranger skippered by
Luke Gillcrist ended up a scant 1/2 point behind grabbing 5th while Zach Medeiros skippered WASP to 12th in the same class. In the 12 boat ORC class E, the crew of Integrity led by skipper Sam Hall, finished 10th while Defiance skippered by
Meade Tolen finished 11th.
For Block Island Race Week, the same boats and crews participated. Steele led his Zephyr crew to 4th place in their eight-boat class and won two of the seven races in the series. Gillcrist aboard Ranger was again one place back in 5th. Mederios aboard Wasp was 11th in a separate class. Sam Hall skippered Integrity to 6th place in their class while Tolen placed 8th in the same class.
The team starts our second block July 5 and will be sailing aboard Navy's sail training craft Zaraffa and Wahoo. The team will be sailing to Maine for competitions in Boothbay Harbor and Southport then moving on to Martha's Vineyard for a three day regatta. The last event will be the Around Long Island Race which runs out of Sea Cliff Yacht Clumb in New York.
