The first day of the APS/ICSA Team Race Nationals had varying conditions and competitive sailing.
Cascade Locks, OR (May 27, 2011) – Today was the first day of the APS/ICSA Team Race National Championship for the Walter C. Wood Memorial Trophy. There are fourteen schools competing in the event covering the seven ICSA conferences. The first part of the event divides the schools into two qualifying groups of seven each. Group one sailed first in the morning and group two in the afternoon. The qualifying round is one round robin to determine the top four teams from each group. The top eight teams are the “gold fleet” and the remaining six teams sail a consolation single round robin, while the gold fleet will sail a double round robin. The “gold fleet” rounds will then determine the top four teams who will sail a single round robin to determine the overall champion.
The day started with sun and breeze 10-12 knots from a westerly direction. The temperatures were in the mid to low 50s most teams were wearing dry suits to accommodate for the cool winds and water. The first round of races moved quickly, so the coed teams did not have much time to evaluate the strong current in the Columbia River. The weather started to change rapidly in the middle of the day fluctuating between light winds and sun to rain and gusts. In the middle of Group One’s rotation, puffs started to roll down the course in the 20-knot range and one clocked at 32 knots. The racers felt every variation in wind pressure and had to make quick decisions about who to sail with when rotating.
Roger Williams University started the day strong beating Georgetown University in the first race. “We were more prepared than Georgetown in the first race and that gave us an edge,” says Alec Anderson a skipper on the RWU team. The RWU team would go on to be undefeated this morning. Amanda Callahan the RWU head coach explained, “the toughest part this morning was making the decision of who should sail with the wind changing so much, but we found a happy medium and we had it right most of the races.” The support that the RWU sailors felt from their sailors onshore was integral to their day and they made a lot of group team decisions. “We are feeling good, we know there is a lot more racing to go, and it feels great to go into the next round undefeated,” Anderson states.
Most schools cycled through a lot of different crews this morning to accommodate for the conditions and this was the case for Georgetown as well, “everyone is fit and strong, so despite it being tricky to decide who should be sailing, we were going to be okay no matter what,” says Mike Callahan head coach at Georgetown University. Georgetown ended the first round in second with only one loss to Roger Williams. Callahan explained, “we made some mistakes today, but we learned—we won some races where we came from behind and it felt good to know we were fast.”
College of Charleston finished the round in third place, and they felt the challenge of deciding on crews as well. Ward Cromwell, head coach for Charleston expressed, “we are not totally happy, but we can move on and still do well with two losses going into the next round.” Yale finished fourth in Group one and will advance to the “gold fleet”. Group Two hopped in the boats and got started racing right away. The same conditions continued throughout the day mixture of rain, clouds and the wind fluctuating up and down.
Boston College dominated Group Two beating St. Mary’s College right off the bat, “our opening race with St. Mary’s was great, we want more like that,” says Greg Wilkinson, head coach of the BC team. Wilkinson continues “we are sailing fast, but there is still a lot of good racing to come.” BC continued their winning streak and finished the Group Two round undefeated.
The wind lightened up into the evening causing the end of Group Two’s round to move slowly. The difficult conditions on the water again pressured each team to focus on their team race plays and pay attention to their boat positioning on the course. Racing continued until past 7 p.m. due to a black flag call in the Hobart vs. Wisconsin race earlier in the afternoon. The hearing resulted in the decision to have a re-sail. Hobart won the re-sail against Wisconsin and then created a three-way tie between Stanford, University of South Florida and Hobart who all had three wins at this point. Stanford and USF re-sailed with Stanford coming out victorious. In Hobart vs. USF, Hobart won.
The four teams that made it into the “gold fleet” from Group Two are Boston College, St. Mary’s College, Stanford and Hobart. Tomorrow’s weather prediction is looking good and the competitors are hoping for good breeze to continue into the “gold fleet” and consolation racing for day two of the APS/ICSA Team Race Nationals. The racing is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Visit the regatta website for full results and live coverage.
Gold Fleet (in no particular order)
Roger Williams
Georgetown
College of Charleston
Yale
Boston College
St. Mary’s
Stanford
Hobart
Nationals Website: 2011nationals.collegesailing.info
Video coverage of the racing and interviews with sailors are available on Sailgroove.
View more photos of the event at GTS Photos: www.gtsphotos.com
The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) is the governing authority for sailing competition at colleges and universities throughout the United States and in some parts of Canada. Visit www.collegesailing.org to learn more. The ICSA National Championships are sponsored by Sperry Top-Sider (www.sperrytopside
r.com), Annapolis Performance Sailing (www.apsltd.com), Gill North America (www.gillna.com),
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