New England Youth Sailing Venue Scouting Report

Sail1Design would like to welcome new High School Reporter Paige Hoffman to our team, as our Northeast High School Sailing Airwaves Reporter. Paige started sailing at age ten at Duxbury Bay Maritime school. By age twelve, she was competing in Optis and transitioned to 420 sailing when she was fourteen, becoming a member of the Duxbury High School sailing team as a freshman in high school and racing through club programs at Duxbury Bay Maritime school in the fall and summer seasons. In the summer, she works as a Junior Sailing Instructor at Duxbury Bay Maritime school, teaching younger sailors the fundamentals of sailing. In 2016, she helped her team win the Mass Bay League Team Race Championship and was named co-captain of her team for the 2017 spring season.
With much of high school and college sailing concentrated in New England, there are significant number venues in the Northeast hosting regattas throughout the spring season. In this article, we will take a closer look at some of the venues commonly used for high school sailing, and what to expect when racing there.
Cape Cod Academy senior Meg Wilson had a lot to say about Wianno Yacht Club in Osterville, home to CCA’s varsity sailing team. “The wind conditions generally settle around 5-12 knots in the spring but there are always lighter days. It is easy to understand the patterns of oscillations of the wind here and use them to our advantage on the race course. Cape Cod Academy owns both a fleet of c420s and a fleet of FJs.”
One of Tabor Academy’s senior crews, Max Williams, had similar knowledge to offer about sailing conditions there. “Buzzards Bay has a history of being a windy venue. When the wind is blowing from the south, the southeast, or coming from the mouth of the harbor, one needs to protect the right especially because righties always come in. Even if the puffs are to the left, the ones who get right often fair better. The wind this year was very strange, there were many pressure drops and crews had to be extra careful not to over flatten during tacks because there are so significant ones even in big breeze.” Having sailed at Tabor myself, I can definitely attest to Max’s experiences there. At this year’s O’Day Qualifier at Tabor, wind conditions were so extreme that there were capsizes and breakdowns occurring every race.
Another venue that many high school or junior sailors will race at is Scituate. Scituate Junior Regatta, which is hosted by Scituate Harbor Yacht Club, has run for 28 years, and is a very popular racing destination for summer sailors all over the region. In the spring season, Scituate harbor is an ideal destination for sailing with the absence of summer moorings. The range of wind in Scituate is very sporadic. The current in the channel can be a significant factor when racing, causing the current and wind to move in opposing directions.

Some Scituate sailors having fun in the preseason

If there were one thing to emphasize about Duxbury in the spring, it would be wind. Duxbury is known for being very windy in the spring, so be prepared for lots of hiking and bailing when sailing there. Current is a significant factor here, and sailors should know the tide schedule so that they can predict how current will affect their starts and mark roundings. The team’s fleet of 12 z420s is just one year old, and the sails have only been used for about a month. As with all z420s, they are faster and more responsive than c420s, and crews are able to sit farther forward in the boat. In the summer, wind conditions in Duxbury change drastically, with most days very light or moderate breeze.
The Charles River is perhaps the most fascinating place to sail in high school. Most high school sailors spend the majority of their sailing time in lakes or bays in suburban areas, lacking the distractions of a busy city venue. Sailors on the Charles River are exposed to an extreme variety of wind conditions. The wind generally blows from the west around 10-20 knots. However, some days provide more challenging conditions. The Charles river has its fair share of extremely light days and very windy days, there tend to be significant shifts every race. Northerlies and southerlies offer sailors especially shifty conditions because of city wind tunnels. In general, sailing on the Charles gives a sailor practice in both light and heavy wind while tuning them to react quickly to shifts and puffs. If you sail at Community Boating, you could sail in either c420s or Cape Cod Mercuries. The latter boat is very different from any racing boat other programs use and is built more like a keelboat than a dinghy. Just up the river at MIT, sailors might sail in either an FJ or Firefly. Fireflies are similar to 420s, with the crew sitting facing the mast, but lacking jib cleats, just like in an like an FJ. They roll hard, and crews need to trim the jib slowly coming out of tacks to get maximum speed.
These are just a few of the many, many places that you as a high school sailor will race at. It is important to be open minded about rigging and tuning wherever you sail, and to get a feel for the conditions on the water. With much of high school sailing taking place either after school or at one-day weekend regattas, there is very little time to devote to this, so it is more important than ever to be efficient at understanding the conditions at unfamiliar venues and coming to conclusions about how this should affect your sailing even before you rig your boat. This will give you a leg up over less perceptive sailors, and therefore, an advantage on the race course.