The No. 10 Dartmouth women's sailing team will travel to Madison, Wis., on Monday to compete at the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association Nationals, where they placed eighth last year.
The Big Green will send five women to the event Becca Dellenbaugh '10, Stephanie Gagnon '10, Rachel Moncton '12, Chandler Salisbury '13 and Madi Gamble '13. Co-head coach John Pearce will travel with them.
There will be 27 teams from around the country attending the four-day competition. Nine teams have already advanced to the finals because they are ranked in the top 10 in the nation, including Ivy League rivals Brown University and Harvard University.
The first two days will consist of races that will cut the remaining field of 18 in half, sending the top nine semifinal finishers to the finals with the previously selected nine teams.
Pearce said that after having been in the running for a top five finish last year, Dartmouth hopes to crack fifth place this time around.
"We have to take it one step at a time," he said. "We must make it out of the semifinals first."
Gagnon said she believes anything is within reach at Nationals.
"We definitely can win," she said. "We have the ability and skills, so we just have to take it one race at a time."
The women are sailing 420s which are crewed by two people in two divisions, A and B. The A-Division Dartmouth team features Dellenbaugh driving in all winds, with Moncton crewing in light winds and Gamble crewing in heavy winds. The B-Division boat has Salisbury driving and Gagnon crewing in all winds.
The cumulative scores for both boats are taken and tallied into a final score, so a team must be good all round in order to do well in Nationals.
The difference between light and heavy winds is important for Dartmouth sailing. Gagnon said that while the team has gotten better this year in breezy conditions, they are still a very light team.
"We have come a long way with breeze since the Fall," she said.
Pearce said the team, while being very fit, is not very heavy. Teams that weigh more in sailing gain an advantage in windy weather.
"Other teams gain the advantage in 15-20 mph winds," he said. "Our prime wind speed is 5-12 mph."
The team will spend the next week preparing as they do during any other week of practice, according to Pearce.
Gagnon said the women's team has been helped by the coed sailing teams which did not make it to Nationals in practice.
"We owe a lot to the coeds for pushing in practice and helping us become better," she said.
At the start of the season, Gagnon described this season as something of a rebuilding year, because the Big Green graduated a large amount of talent the year before.
"We were not really sure what to expect," she said. "The freshmen stepped up, and we had a good season."
Dellenbaugh, who was named to the first team New England Women's Sailing as a skipper, said that the season up until this point has been filled with a lot of success, and the freshmen exceeded every expectation that the team had.
She went on to say that what Gamble does subbing on windy days is particularly difficult because she could sit around for an entire regatta and not race.
"Madi is very enthusiastic," she said. "When it gets windy, she lights up."
The team reached nationals in large part because Gagnon and Salisbury's boat finished sixth at the New England Women's Championship.
The Big Green will be in action at the University of Vermont on Saturday for more practice in preparation for Nationals.
The semifinals will be held May 25-26 and the finals May 27-28. Both will take place in Madison.
