Sailing Rides Sparse Winds to Third Place Finish

As any grizzled pirate with a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder will gladly tell you, even the swabbiest sailors can do very little with a weak wind at their backs.

Don't believe Ol' One-Eyed Pete? Just ask Harvard's co-ed sailing team.

The Crimson piled into a bus on Friday afternoon and drove eight hours--including a grueling stretch on the New Jersey Turnpike--to the Navy Fall Intersectional at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.

When it arrived, the American flags hung lazily in the halls of Montezuma and nary a worthy wave lapped the shores of Tripoli.

And what has traditionally been one of the fall's most important regattas became one of the season's biggest disappointments. The Crimson, however, managed to escape with a respectable third place finish out of 18 boats.

"It was pretty frustrating," co-captain Sarah Levin said. "[The race organizers] decided to wait for the sea breeze to fill, which it basically never did."

At around three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, the race organizers decided to send the boats out anyway. The organizers did, after all, need to get three races off in each division to get the event to count as an official regatta.

The Harvard sails purloined what strength they could from the gentle breeze and sailed quite well, finishing behind only St. Mary's and Navy.

More importantly than the finish, the team got valuable experience handling their boats in the sparse winds.

"Our team traditionally hasn't been great in not much breeze, and we all had good speed, which was really good to see," Levin said.

Already on the horizon for the Crimson are the National Championships, which take place in Newport on November 5-7.

Sophomores Sean Doyle and Margaret Gill both qualified to compete, with Gill hoping to defend the national title she won last year.

For their sake, let's hope that it happens to be a windy weekend.