By Airwaves Writer Lydia Whiteford
Two days after Christmas, 5 of my teammates and I traveled from various places in the country to the US Sailing Center in Martin County, FL. There, through the use of planes, trains, and automobiles, we joined 7 other teams to compete in the Vanguard 15 Midwinter regatta.
This regatta, taking place over 6 days, included both a fleet racing and a team-racing event, all in V-15s. Though my own team did not participate in the fleet racing portion of the event, showing up a day early provided us with some valuable on the water practice hours before the team-racing event started. When the team-race regatta finally started, it brought with it steady breeze ranging from 12 to 20 knots for 3 straight days. Multiple round robins were sailed, and every race sailed was well won or hard-lost due to the great competition, despite there being only 8 teams on the roster.
When I signed up for midwinters, I saw it originally as a chance to spend a couple of days in Florida sailing with some of my best friends in a boat I really loved. Upon arriving, I was pleasantly shocked to see that I recognized most of the faces on all the different teams from college regattas. What made it even better was facing them on the water, and seeing that every race was treated with the upmost seriousness across the board. Teams consisted of sailors from Boston College, Vermont, Charleston, and a number of other highly competitive schools within college sailing. Nearly every race was sailed with the level of intensity that one would find at a qualifying regatta or even nationals. For an event that is viewed, understandably, as being pretty casual, it was nice to see my peers use every race to their advantage. It is for this reason that I will shamelessly lobby for all college sailors to consider this event every winter, even if their individual experience sailing a Vanguard is minimal. According to Judge Ryan, a senior on the Brown sailing team, midwinters was valuable to him because “ [he] was able to get a lot of team racing reps in before the spring season has even kicked off. It’s a great way to warm up for the spring.” Judge had never sailed or even rigged a Vanguard before going to Florida, but managed to glean a huge benefit because of the way the regatta was designed and whom it was geared towards.
The one slight detraction from the value of the event was the number of teams and boats that signed up, with there being only 8 teams in the team-racing regatta and 9 boats total for fleet racing. The quality of the competition was so great that it would be a real loss to the sport if this regatta dwindled into nonexistence over the next few years. “The Vanguard class is great because it brings together past and present college sailors to create competitive team racing available to anyone,” says Abby Preston, current Roger Williams junior and media representative for the Vanguard class, “midwinters is an awesome event to sail as a college sailor because it gives us a chance to get back into team racing with high level competition while getting to know everyone off the water as well.” Midwinters is a great way to reintroduce an off-season brain to the competition that it is going to face in the spring, and the only way to keep this excellent opportunity a reality is to keep signing up every year. For anyone who is interested, or is looking for upcoming regattas or general information about the fleet, you can like “Vanguard 15 Class Association” on Facebook.
Event winners, college of Charleston Graduates, team name “Bedroom Bazooka”
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