Sailing Wraps Up Fall Season on Mixed Note

The Harvard sailing team concluded its last full slate of the fall season over the weekend, competing in a pair of Atlantic Coast Championship regattas on its way to seventh- and ninth-place finishes in ACC competition.

The No. 7 co-ed squad finished in seventh place at the Atlantic Coast Dinghies at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., while the No. 8 women took ninth at the Atlantic Coast Women’s regatta at Yale. The results came on a weekend of sometimes unpredictable conditions, providing a bit of consolation to the middle-of-the-pack finishes for both teams.

“It was a pretty good finish, all things considered,” captain skipper Kyle Kovacs said.

Though the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association’s Shields Trophy is set to take place this weekend in Fort Worth, Tex., this past weekend’s races mark the effective end to the Crimson’s fall sailing schedule.

“Overall, it was a good end to the season,” junior Lauren Brants said, “but we have to work on some things over the winter and early in the spring season.”

ATLANTIC COAST DINGHIES

The warm waters of St. Petersburg welcomed the Crimson on Saturday and Sunday at the Atlantic Coast Dinghies, an 18-team regatta featuring mostly Northeastern schools. Harvard’s seventh-place finish came after 26 total races, and Boston College took the top spot in the end.

Kovacs and senior crew Elyse Dolbec paced the Crimson in A-division. The duo took third place comfortably, even after a bit of trouble in the early races.

“It was disappointing to see how we started the regatta, but we rallied pretty well on Saturday afternoon and Sunday,” Kovacs said. “Third was a decent finish, especially considering this fleet was arguably more competitive than the fleet we see at the national championship.”

In B-division, Harvard didn’t fare as well behind the efforts of juniors Jon Garrity and Kerry Anne Bradford and sophomores Drew Robb and Michelle Konstadt. Garrity and Robb shared skipper duties with Bradford and Konstadt at crew.

“I was pretty excited about how Jon Garrity rallied himself on Sunday afternoon,” Kovacs said. “I think Jon was having a poor morning, and Drew Robb had two bad races, but Jon went back out there and was sailing above the level he’d been sailing earlier. That was good to see.”

Part of the division’s struggles came from the fact that the conditions weren’t as expected, and the lack of consistency by Mother Nature made things tough for the Crimson.

“These conditions on paper were pretty good for us, pretty similar to what we sail on the Charles,” Kovacs said. “But there was lots of boat traffic, lots of chop, and there were some sporadic waves.”

WOMEN’S ATLANTIC COAST CHAMPIONSHIP

New Haven played host to the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championships, where Harvard finished ninth and the host-Bulldogs took first place. Neither boat stood out in the 18-team field, but it was the Crimson’s B-division duo that fared best, also taking ninth place.

Junior Roberta Steele and sophomore Liz Powers shared time at skipper for the division, while Brants was in sole charge of crew duties during the nine races.

“The forecast was for really cold weather and really high breeze, but it wasn’t quite so bad,” Brants said. “There was a high-velocity breeze on Saturday, and on Sunday, the wind direction was shifty and very variable.”

That variable wind had its biggest effect on the A-division team of captain skipper Megan Watson and freshman crew Meghan Wareham, who struggled to an 11th-place finish.

“There was a little bit of chop, and the conditions were different than what we’re used to,” Brants said. “Overall, we sailed well, but we had a few things that cost us.”

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