W. Sailing Kicks Off Spring in Charleston

The last time the No. 9 Harvard women’s sailing team took to the water, it was November, when the Crimson earned a seventh-place finish in the Atlantic Coast Championships.

That action was the finale to the winter season, with the promise of winter and and imminent respite for the women’s team.

But with action in South Carolina this weekend, the women concluded the first event of the spring season with a fourth-place finish and gained some confidence less than a week before co-ed competition begins at the Charleston Spring Intersectional, held at the same site.

“It was definitely a good start for our season,” senior captain Sloan Devlin said. “We were very rusty, and we were really going to check out the conditions, since we have nationals there.”

Harvard’s total of 135 points trailed only No. 1 Yale, host and No. 5 Charleston, and No. 2 Navy, who finished with 64, 106, and 106 points, respectively.

The Crimson beat four teams—No. 3 St. Mary’s, who finished 10th, No. 4 Hawaii, which took fifth place, as well as No. 7 Stanford and No. 8 Georgetown, who finished in sixth and seventh places, respectively. All were ranked higher than Harvard entering the season.

The Crimson was paced by its A-division, consisting of senior skipper Devlin and junior crew Christina Dahlman.

The tandem notched just 63 points and finished in third place . Also sailing strong were freshman Roberta Steele, senior Jessica Baker, and freshman Christina Cordeiro, who all shared in guiding the B-division to a fourth-place finish.

“We had to adjust for the current, which we don’t do on the Charles River, so we made a couple of mistakes,” Devlin said.

The second day did not begin until approximately an hour following the scheduled time due to excessive wind, but Sunday still featured five A-division and seven B-division races.

Once action finally did get underway, a 10-20 MPH wind from the west coupled with temperatures in the mid-40’s provided rather mild conditions in a regatta that saw a total of 11 races in each division.

The first day of the event ended with the Crimson sitting in sixth place overall, thanks to an A-division score of 35 and an output of 34 from the B-division. The total of 67 trailed fifth-place Hawaii by just three points but Harvard still sat a sizable distance from first-place Yale.

“We were pleased with our result overall, and it was a good way to start off the year,” Devlin said.

The Bulldogs ended day one with just 21 points, a healthy 29 ahead of Navy, which rested in second place with 50 points.

The Intersectional, an event which began in 1981, opens spring action following a winter break of nearly three months. It serves as a precursor to next weekend’s action, the Charleston Spring Intersectional.

It will be the first event of the spring season for the co-ed squad, which enters the spring ranked sixth overall in the Sailing World college rankings.

“It’s a good foreshadow of even bigger regattas,” senior Mallory Greimann said. “Nationals are also there at the end of the season, so should offer some experience.”

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.