Sailing Success Continues

Though its season has hit a hiatus, accomplishments for the women’s sailing team continue to filter in. Fresh off the team’s second place finish at the New England Championships (and the spot for Nationals that such a high finish entails), three Crimson sailors were named to the All New England Women’s Team by their peers.

Junior captain Jennie Philbrick and freshman Genny Tulloch were among the 10 skippers selected, and junior Diana Rodin was selected as one of the best crews in the region. Though not named, classmate Clemmie Everett was the only sailor to draw votes in both the skipper and crew categories, a testament to her athletic ability according to senior Michelle Yu.

Bringing Their A Game

Harvard’s success at women’s New Englands was matched only by the co-ed team’s finish at the Coast Guard Academy. The top finish earned Harvard the Thompson Trophy. Behind those two successes is the remarkable weekend that both the co-ed and the women’s A boats enjoyed. In Connecticut, seniors Clay Bischoff and Lema Kikuchi finished in first place by a comfortable margin, buoyed by strong early races that set them at the top of the pack for the weekend.

For the two, such success is nothing new—Bischoff and Kikuchi began sailing together four years ago when they were the Crimson’s standout freshman boat. The years of sailing together has given them a cohesion that other skipper-crew combinations may not be able to develop.

“I believe that four years of experience sailing together was [one of] the biggest advantages for Clay and Lema,” Yu said.

Bischoff added some credit to the improvement on starts he and Kikuchi have made since the start of the season.

“Our starts were consistently good and our boathandling and boatspeed have become solid through our years of sailing together,” Bischoff said.

The women’s A boat posted similiarly impressive results, winning by 13 points over rival Tufts, though with very different reasons behind those results. That boat was skippered by Tulloch and crewed by Yu, marking the second straight week—and second ever—the two have been partnered. And Yu, as someone who usually crews for the co-ed boats, has been very impressed with the way Tulloch has handled herself.

“Genny has had an amazing freshman year,” Yu said. “I think she has come a long way in perfecting the type of sailing that wins regattas: simple starts, conservative tactics and consistency above all else. Winning A division at the New England Championships is no small deal, and I am excited to see her compete at Nationals.”

Winning Combinations

With the women’s team inactive until Nationals, the co-ed team will focus most of its attention on Mystic Lake in Somerville, where the New England Team Race Championships will be held.

The last time the Crimson competed on Mystic Lake was at the beginning of April in the Friis Trophy regatta. That weekend, the team posted a strong opening day score, 7-2, but floundered somewhat in the second-day round against the top teams, going 3-3. That 10-5 finish left Harvard in third place after losing a tie-breaker with Yale.

The Intercollegiate Sailing Association increased the number of Nationals berths that come out of New England this year from two to three, in recognition of the dominance New England teams generally have in team racing competitions. That means Harvard can struggle like it did in the Friis and still have its ticket punched for Nationals in Detroit.

But that was not the attitude advocated by the team. It focused instead on its mistakes the last time the competition was held, and how to avoid those this time around.

“Mystic Lake is characteristically unpredictable and fluky, meaning the teams that do the best are the ones that are opportunistic and quick to adapt to changes in combinations,” Yu said.

Combination changes are the key to team racing. Six boats, three for each team, sail on the same course, competing for the lowest sum of finishes. A combination of a first and a second automatically wins the race, for example, no matter what the final finish of that team is. Yu thought the team was strong in the latter category, but lacked a little bit of opportunistic spirit, a notion Bischoff seconded.

“We need to be more aggressive in the pre-start battles for position on the starting lines because Mystic Lake is always going to give you some erratic wind shifts,” Bischoff said.

Even though the team has its strategy for improvement and three additional weeks of sailing under its belt, the fact that it can compete against Tufts, Yale and Dartmouth has already been established. Now the question is how high the Crimson will finish, for its ticket for Detroit has been all but booked.

—Staff writer Timothy M. McDonald can be reached at tmcdonal@fas.harvard.edu.