Sailing Finishes Season with Atlantic Coast Tournament

The Harvard coed sailing team finished up its season this weekend with the Atlantic Coast Tournament. The conditions really put a damper on the tournament as only four of the 16 scheduled races actually took place.

Connecticut College hosted 18 teams down on the Thames River in New London in this two-day competition. This intersectional regatta involved “FJs,” a specific type of boat through races across two divisions.

The Crimson failed to qualify for the Atlantic Coast Championship earlier this season, so this weekend’s regatta marked the definitive end for the entire team.

“It was a challenging event with poor racing conditions,” Mollerus said. “We did not preform our best but left with many take-away points on areas where we can improve."

Only four sailors went south to represent Harvard on the water. Sophomores Andrew Mollerus and Sydney Karnovsky paired up for the A division while senior Luke O’Connor joined freshman Julia Lord in the B division boat.

The Crimson finished 14th overall despite its 13th place finishes in both the A and B divisions. There were only four races in total.

The poor weather conditions presented the toughest challenges for the competitors this weekend.

“There was light wind and it rained a lot,” Mollerus said. “There were very unusual conditions and made for a poor racing performance.”

The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association did not provide more information on the specifics of the conditions, but the sailor’s provided enough emphasis to show their disappointment.

“There wasn't much wind on both Saturday and Sunday,” Karnovsky said. “Due to the lack of wind, most of us had the mentality to just try to enjoy the last weekend as much as possible and sail as well as we could.”

“With poor wind conditions there were a lot of delays in between races, but we did our best to stay ready,” Mollerus said. “We did our best to stay focused and ready.”

Mollerus and Karnovsky finished with 43 points. They finished one rotation in third place, which ultimately would have been Harvard’s lowest score of the weekend.

In the B division, O’Connor and Lord racked in 45 points, with their best race also being the second rotation, where they finished in 7th place.

Besides these two single-digit finishes, the Crimson failed to score lower than the 11th place for any of its other rotations.

“We were sailing on a river, which has a lot more current than we are used to so the water was moving under us much faster,” Mollerus said.

In his opinion, the race starts were the weak point of the weekend as a whole.

“It really changed the dynamics of the starting line because [the strong currents] were something we don’t get in practice very often,” Mollerus added.

Harvard’s strengths on the water this weekend came through with boat-handling, especially in the present conditions.

“We learned a lot of lessons about how to manage and improve our tactful decisions on the water,” Mollerus said.

With this weekend bringing an end to the fall season, the Harvard sailors had plenty to reflect on and take with them heading into winter training and the spring competitions.

Last spring the Crimson carried a young roster of mostly freshmen and sophomores. Now a year older, the sailors attribute the greater success this season to their growing confidence on and off the water.

“This year we returned every starter,” Mollerus said. “We opened up the season very strong, getting the best results we had in years.”

Mollerus gave a shout-out to freshman teammate Juan Perdomo, who qualified for men’s singlehanded nationals for lasers in one of the first weekends of the season. This was the first time a Harvard sailor has accomplished this feat since 2007.

“Later in the season, our results waned a little bit,” Mollerus said. “We definitely did not have the ultimate results that we wanted.”

Despite these disappointing results, the team is optimistic about their chances in the spring season.

“Now that the season's over, I think that the team feels disappointed with the turnout of [Atlantic Coast Championship] qualifiers,” Karnovsky said. “We’re very excited to work on team racing in the upcoming weeks and go into the spring ready to sail well.”

—Staff writer Tanner Skenderian can be reached at tskenderian@college.harvard.edu.