This weekend the East Coast saw a rebounding pressure system in the atmosphere, full of swirling highs, lows and close calls. The sailing team thus faced a certain obstacle to its performances this weekend. At the 18-team intersectional Danmark Trophy Regatta held at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, the team battled constantly changing weather conditions with dynamic crewing.
College regattas are usually held under a divisional format, whereby each school competing enters a team in each division of the regatta (most regattas have only two, A and B). The scores from each division are summed and the school with the lowest combined score is the winner. Thus, it's possible to "win" A-division but not the regatta, if for example a school's B-division team gets fifth place in its division.
Any given school's "team" for a single division is two sailors, a skipper (driver) and crew (mastermind). Thus a school needs at least four sailors to compete in a regatta. However, they may have more sailors and send in substitute sailors -- thus enter the masterminding. The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (the governing body of college sailing) allows a crew to switch divisions once (but then must stay in that division) while a skipper may not switch divisions at all. Such switching is extremely useful when the winds go from heavy to light; crew weight makes a huge difference in boat performance.
These rules allow the highly intelligent Dartmouth sailors to maximize their weight advantage through changing wind conditions.
When the Danmark opened with light-to-moderate breeze, Dartmouth started with Erik Storck '07 and Clementine James '05 sailing in A, while Andrew Loe '06 and Elisabeth Kreter '05 were sailing B. When the breeze picked up and Dartmouth needed some more crew weight, A-division became Storck and Jimmy "I'm huge" Attridge '07 while Loe in B-division picked up James to sail B. When the breeze let up again at the end of the day, Storck got another, smaller crew in the form of Killarney Loufek '07 while Loe went back to Kreter to finish out the day.
By planning ahead effectively and switching crews to keep their boats optimally competitive, the Big Green navigated its way to second in A-division, third in B-division and a third place overall finish, just six points out of second after 36 races.
Also at Coast Guard two weekends ago was the New England Women's Singlehanded Championship Finals. Lauren Padilla '05 and the fleet of 38 women from around New England felt the effects of the weather just as much as the teams at Danmark this weekend. A large fleet tends to spread out pretty quickly; however, the top seven New England women were in a duel till the last set of races, knowing that the top five would advance to U.S. Nationals.
Going into the last set of races for the day, Padilla was in a two-way tie for third place, with the fifth place boat only two points behind. Unfortunately, when the wind lightened and shifted every which way at the end of the day, Padilla struggled to stay fast and dropped back to a seventh-place overall finish, just points out of qualifying for Nationals. Padilla is now even more set on qualifying for Women's Dingy Nationals in the spring.
In another slightly irregular placement, Dartmouth sent usual women's skipper Emily East '06 (itching for action after last week's Sloop-a-Loop shore watch) with crew Kate Hacker '07 to sail A-division with the big boys at the Penobscot Bay Open at Maine Maritime Academy.
East commented, "I usually sail women's regattas, so sailing against boys again was a lot of fun. The breeze got a little light and shifty on Sunday, but despite that, it was worth the six-hour drive."
The team struggled a little in A, coming in sixth of 15 teams, while Christina Duncan '06 dominated B-division, winning by 13 points with the help of Mike Wilde '07. The team placed fourth overall.
A team composed entirely of '08s rounded out the weekend down at Yale. A squad of Betsy Bryant, Andrew Geffken, Benjamin Sampson and Adele Wilhelm mixed skippers and crews to sail the fourth Southern Series on Saturday and the fourth Freshmen Series on Sunday. The team finished fourth and fifth overall in fleets of 11 and six teams respectively.
Next week the Dartmouth men will sail at the New England Men's Singlehanded Championship Finals at Roger Williams and the Ivy-League Championships at Cornell.
