No. 2 Bulldogs Triumph in the Bay State at Friis/Marchiando Team Race Event
April 6, 2008
Friis/Marchiando Team Race Results
Admiral Alymers Trophy Results
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The No. 2 Bulldog sailors had a successful weekend in the Boston area, winning the Friis and Marchiando Team Races hosted by Tufts and MIT on Saturday and Sunday. This built on the team's win at the event in 2007. The team also competed at the Admiral Alymers Trophy at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and won the Central Series Four event hosted by Boston College.
The Friis and Marchiando Team Race featured variable winds and tough competition, with the Elis beating out the squad from No. 3 Boston College. On Saturday, very light wind prevented racing from occurring until 2:00 p.m. At that point, a single round-round was completed in a light and shifty two to six knot breeze. On Sunday, the team competed on Mystic Lake in Larks at the Tufts facility, where the wind was stronger with large puffs into the 12-15 knot range. Sunday also featured the large, erratic shifts with large lulls that the facility is known for.
On Saturday, the team raced in a qualifying round of seven teams on the Charles River in FJ's provided by MIT. The team fared very well in the light breeze, going undefeated with a 6-0 record in the round-robin to qualify for the championship round at Tufts on Sunday. While a number of the races were close, the Bulldogs came out on top each time with their superior boat handling, a critical element in the light breeze.
On Sunday, the Elis moved on to the Larks at Tufts for the championship round of the Friis and Marchiando Team Races. The team started out slowly in the Larks, an unfamiliar boat that is sailed almost exclusively by Tufts, but quickly adapted to the boat and continued their success from the previous day. Despite the shifty winds that were fairly unpredictable, the team overcame the difficulties to lose only two races, including their first race, which was to Tufts who had the benefit on sailing at their home venue and in their boats. The team ended the regatta with a 12-2 record, while the next best team was Boston College with a 9-5 record.
Sophomore captain Thomas Barrows felt good about the team's results and singled out a number of skills that helped achieve the win.
"On Saturday, we were very good in the one-on-one situations," Barrows said. "When it was just one boat from our team and one from the other team, we were usually able to use our boat handling and speed to pass the other team. On Sunday, we had very good starts and adapted quickly to sailing the Larks. Our boat handling in them improved over the day."
Sailing for the Bulldogs were skippers senior Zachary Brown and sophomores Barrows and John Kempton. Crewing for the team was senior Abigail Coplin and juniors Adriane Levin and Grace Becton.
The fleet race team competed at the Admiral Alymers Trophy hosted by the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on Saturday and Sunday, where the team placed 10th, an improvement on their 14th place finish in 2007. On Saturday, the team raced in zero to four knots of wind, challenging conditions for the most experienced of sailors. At times, wind would fill in on certain parts of the course without ripples appearing on the water, making predicting the favored side of the course tough. On Sunday, the wind was stronger, with consistent wind of eight to 15 knots, with puffs up to 18 knots and lulls as small as three knots. The wind was very shifty with large differences in the wind in a span of only a few boat lengths. Puffs filtered onto the pond from the tree-lined hills surrounding Great Herring Pond in a seemingly random manner, making a predictable strategy hard to master.
The tough conditions led to the team's inconsistency as many of its decisions had to be made on predictions without solid information. The team finished with 189 points over the 10 races in each division.
B Division led the way with a 66-point performance that was good for 6th place out of 17 teams in the division. The team of junior skipper Caleb Dorfman and senior crew Harriet Thayer found success at times, winning three of the 10 races contested, including the first race of the regatta. The team only finished outside of the top half of the fleet in three races and had strong positioning at a number of marks in races which it eventually fell behind in.
In A Division, the team of sophomore skipper Rebecca Jackson and junior crew Elizabeth Clark-Polner placed 13th in their division with a 123-point total. The team's finishes were much higher and consistent in the stronger winds on Sunday.
Thayer believes that even though the finishes were inconsistent, the results do not tell the whole story of the team's performance.
"We had very good boat speed on the upwind and reach legs on Sunday," Thayer said. "Even though some of our finishes were lower than we'd like, we sailed well in many races and types of conditions. In those races that we did not finish well, there were critical points that we were leading the race before making minor mistakes that allowed the competition to pass us. It is encouraging because most things were going smoothly for us."
The team also won the Central Series Four event hosted by Boston College on Saturday and Sunday. The event, which featured nine schools racing in combined divisions so there were 18 boats racing at one time, had light winds with current on Saturday before the wind built to 15-20 knots on Sunday.
The team finished with 92 points, a strong finish and 14-point gap over the next closest competitor, Boston College. The A Division team of sophomore skipper Sarah Lihan and freshman crew Blair Belling finished with 45 points over the eight races, good for second overall in the regatta. The B Division team of freshman skipper Molly Lucas and sophomore crew Michael Hession ended with 47 points, a fourth-place finish overall. Both the A Division and B Division boats won races, with A winning the first race of the regatta and B the second race of the regatta. The team was overall very consistent, only finishing outside of the top-ten boats three times between A and B Divisions.
The Bulldogs are next in competition on Saturday and Sunday at the New England Dinghy Championships hosted by Salve Regina, the Moody Trophy hosted by Rhode Island and the Oberg Trophy hosted by MIT.
Report filed by Caleb Dorfman '09, Yale Sports Publicity
