The Dartmouth women's sailing team, hot off recent wins on the more competitive co-ed circuit, arrived at this weekend's women's event guns blazing.
The Big Green crushed the field this weekend at Boston University's President's Trophy.
Over two days and 20 races, with a very light breeze, the Dartmouth team of Lauren Padilla '05, Liz Hyon '05, Emily East '06 and Christina Duncan '06 blew away the other 11 teams in attendance, winning the regatta by 11 points.
"The women's team sailed very well on Saturday and were winning the regatta after eight races in each division," Duncan said. "We were able to keep our lead on Sunday, despite sailing races in no wind. We are hoping to carry our momentum through the next two weekends and qualify for Nationals at New Englands."
In the A-division, Padilla and Hyon placed in the top five in all races but the final one, which was sailed in zero breeze.
East and Duncan showed equally impressive consistency, finishing in the top five in eight of their 10 races.
It is this kind of reliability through variable conditions that has helped the team dominate early season action.
This weekend at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, the Dartmouth sloop-a-loop sailors qualified for the New England Sloop Championships, though they failed to take home the regatta win. The Big Green finished second to Harvard out of the eight teams in attendance.
As most of college sailing is done in two-person boats or dinghies, sloop sailing is a bit of a specialty. Not only is the sloop a triple-handed boat (three crew members are needed to sail), but sloops also employ a spinnaker sail (the big colorful sail used when going downwind) and a fixed keel rather than a centerboard. Additionally, there is only one division in sloop sailing.
The unusual sloop circumstances result in unusual sloop strategies and tactics that markedly differ from typical college sailing.
The Dartmouth sloop team of Erik Johnson '06, Karl Johnson '06, Andrew Geffken '08 and Paul Durkee '06 were tied with Harvard going into the last race on Sunday, after establishing a sizeable lead earlier in regatta. However, the Big Green could not finish the job.
"We started off the day with some great races, ending up with a six-point lead with only three races left to complete," Johnson said. "However, in the afternoon the breeze died down and the current became a large factor. With a few mistakes on the starting line, we ended the regatta in second place, three points behind Harvard's A-division dingy sailors."
Elsewhere in New England, Dartmouth lost a tough tiebreaker to place second in the Metro Series, hosted by Harvard. At Tufts's Jan T. Friis Trophy, the Big Green team racers broke into the top fleet of six teams, finishing up in fourth place overall, and at the Yale Team Racing Intersectional, a few close calls left the Dartmouth sailors in yet another tiebreaker. Once again, Dartmouth lost and settled for second.
