BRIEF: Sailing Takes Competes at New England Team Race Championship, Emily Wick Regatta

This weekend, the Harvard Sailing team faced off in two regattas—the New England Team Race Championship and the Emily Wick Trophy. Last weekend, the squad competed in four regattas against many of the same teams it rematched this weekend.

The New England Team Race Championship was hosted by Tufts and held in the Charles River basin, where the Crimson vied among eleven other top tier collegiate programs in Lark vessels. Since the venue also serves as Harvard’s home course, difficult conditions are nothing foreign to the seasoned Charles River veterans.

However, with winds of up to 8-28 knots, the weather proved to be extremely adverse. Early on, many sailboats in the field experienced breakdowns, and one boat lost its spreader bracket rivet, causing its mast to bend. In response to the complications, the regatta officials dropped six boats from the races to make it only an 18-boat race.

Harvard walked away with an eighth place finish from the regatta, tallying a cumulative 5-13 record at the race and beating out the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Bowdoin College, Connecticut College, and Brown. Yale prevailed despite the rough waters and secured the conference championship, locking up an 18-5 record.

In the Emily Wick Trophy, in which only the women’s division of the team competed, the Crimson lined up in a field of 20 collegiate programs at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. The races were run in FJ and Z420 sailboats, and the sailors faced similarly variable wind conditions to their Charles River basin counterparts.

In the end, the Crimson completed the two-day regatta placing 15th overall, a two-place drop in rank compared to last year’s iteration of the race. Harvard fell to Ivy League schools competing in the interconference regatta, including the Bulldogs, which took the trophy, No.7 Brown, and No.12 Dartmouth. Nevertheless, Harvard bested Penn in addition to four other programs by the end of the weekend.

While the Crimson may have been met with mixed results this past weekend, it will compete in the Thompson Trophy, Presidents Trophy, Owen Trophy, and the Ogen Trophy next Saturday.

—Staff writer Patrick J. Anderson can be reached at patrick.anderson@thecrimson.com.