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New England Fall Championships
They can fly! How do you stand around all weekend in the cold and the
rain and the wind and the snow and have fun? You coach the Boston
University Sailing Team. The theme for the weekend was "You Are
Players". And indeed they were. Dave Welch with 100 lb crew Jen Baker
finish 6th in A division. Kaya Haig and Christine Retlev finished 3rd
in B, 6 points back (Matt Galston heavied for Kaya when she switched to
FJ's for the last two races on saturday). We finished fourth of
eighteen and grabbed the first qualifying spot for Coed Atlantic Coast
Championships. Tufts, Harvard and Dartmouth were top three, but had
already qualified at the Danmark. Harvard, Dartmouth and Tufts were
also the top three ranked teams in the country and we
battled with these teams throughout the weekend. We beat 5th ranked
Boston College, 8th ranked College of Charleston and other ranked teams,
Vermont and URI.
We showed we can dance with the big boys and it wasn't just because
of our "Tech-nology". Sure we know how to move around in a Tech Dinghy,
but where our varsity sailing team came alive was on the starting line.
We were on it, with a hole to leeward, and the game was afoot. From
there, it was such a pleasure to watch these guys nail shift after shift
as they bounced from fan puff to fan puff, always keeping their heads
out of the boat which is so important when it's blowing 15-30 from the
NNW on the Charles (45 kt. gusts were recorded on saturday). Actually,
"keep your head out of the boat" was the coach's big theme this
weekend. If we couldn't anticipate the new stuff instead of "reacting"
to the present stuff, we weren't going to challenge the top teams. As
can be expected in big breeze blowing across the river, the blasts would
drop down over the Cambridge cityscape and splash upon the Charles and
scatter. We were in tune to it and used it to point the bow at the mark
and sail through much of the fleet in the process. Keeping our head out
of the boat also provided us with great straight-line speed. We were
anticipating the velocity shifts and steering very well through them.
Sailtrim was equally impressive as we eased early, before we were on our
ear, and then trimmed as we brought the bow up on the beats. Downwind,
we kept our helm balanced, and got to the back of the bus as some major
screechers came barreling across, charging towards Beantown.
"A" division flipped twice in FJ's on Saturday (plenty of 25 knot
blasts) but got it up quick and recovered some of the damage. "B"
division had to do a couple of sets of circles on Sunday. That's about
it on the mistake front. We didn't hit any buoys, we weren't over on
any starts, we didn't dig into any corners of doom. We could have had
some better weather mark and windward finish approaches but that was so
difficult to read in that wind direction, as the breeze went from major
lulls to splashing down over the rooftops with little warning. Our
boathandling was very good, but the top teams are still more consistent
at it. Still, a great weekend. Rah Buds!
Results at: http://www.collegesailing.org/neisa/00schell.txt
-Brad Churchill
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