The successes at those regattas stand in sharp contrast to the Big Green's 12th-place showing at the George Warren Smith Trophy held at MIT this past weekend.
On the Charles River in Boston, Becca Dellenbaugh '10 and Sarah Johnston '09 finished tied for second place in Division A of the Regis Bowl. In Division-B competition, Big Green sailors Kendall Reiley '09 and Kathy Oprea '10 beat out the other 16 boats in the field to take first place.
Light winds forced a late start on Sunday, but the two boats handled the weather well to secure second place for the Big Green, 17 points behind Boston University.
"The breeze got pretty light on Sunday, but we did a good job staying focused and working hard in the two races that happened," Reiley said.
Last week, the weather on Lake Mascoma, where the Big Green practices, cooperated, and the team was able to prepare for the conditions they faced in Boston on Saturday afternoon.
"The women's team has been tearing it up all week at practice in similar conditions to what they competed in, so it's no surprise that they performed well this weekend," Matthew Cohen '10 said." There were some strong results from the freshmen and underclassmen."
Farther south, in Connecticut at the Southern Series Three, Bernie Roesler '12 and Courtney Gerwin '11 finished in third place overall, while Colin Treseler '09 and Ali Hiller '11 finished sixth to carry the Big Green to another team runner-up finish in one of the windiest regattas of the weekend.
The University of Rhode Island won the event, edging out Dartmouth by 10 points in the team standings.
In the third regatta over the weekend, the Smith Trophy race, the Big Green could not match the top-five results of their female counterparts as they finished in 12th place against a sizably larger field of 27 teams
Samuel Williams '12 and Anne Megargel '09 finished in the middle of the pack in Division A, while the boat of Ed Jude Glackin '11 and Sarah Freihofer '10 fared slightly better, with a ninth-place finish in Division B.
The performance was good enough for 12th place in the team tally, while Tufts University took first place.
Part of Dartmouth's struggles at MIT may be attributed to the quality of the competition at the regatta. The Smith Trophy is heralded each year as one of college sailing's major events, drawing together some of the best sailing teams from schools throughout New England.
"The 12th-place finish at the Smith is still a good result because it's one of the biggest regattas that we'll go to all year," Cohen said.
Reiley notes that the Dartmouth sailors used Tech Dinghies for the Smith Trophy, a type of boat used only at MIT.
These boats have only one sail and are heavier and slower than the Flying Juniors, or FJs, which the Big Green practices in, and other collegiate sailboat models that have two sails.
Additional time in these other boats may be needed for the team to improve their performance in certain regattas.
"I think that as a team we need to improve in sailing boats other than the FJs that we practice in, as we sometimes have a harder time sailing in 420s, Larks or Techs," Cohen said.
The FJ is a two-sailed boat that is sailed competitively around the world and makes up the racing fleets for most high school and collegiate sailing teams.
"The FJ is small, lightweight and maneuverable, which makes it good in light wind conditions," Cohen said. "When the wind gets heavier, it can be unstable but it is still a better boat than the Tech."
420s are wider and more stable than FJs. Larks are similar in size and shape to 420s but are faster boats that tend to tack better.
Reiley hopes that the sailing program will capitalize on the momentum of the promising results of this past weekend.
"We had a solid weekend this past weekend where we managed to be consistently near the top at a variety of regattas," Reiley said. "And we're psyched to carry that into the next couple weeks in order to qualify for the Atlantic Coast championships."
Following the strong showing at the Regis Bowl, the women's team looks forward to carrying this solid result into the major competition next weekend at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.
The rest of the team will be traveling all over New England, sending sailors to the Casco Bay Open hosted by Bowdoin College, the New England Men's Single-Handed Championships hosted by Yale, the Hobart William Smith Intersectional Invitational at the University of New Hampshire, and the Storm Trysail Big Boat Regatta in Larchmont, New York on Long Island Sound.
