With the Atlantic Coast Championships (ACCs) set to begin at Hobart and William Smith Colleges Saturday, this past weekend gave some sailors who don't usually attract the spotlight had the opportunity to do just that.
Even though the four regattas taking place across Saturday and Sunday had no effect on the overall team's national or conference standing, Tufts still witnessed some less-than-ideal results. At the Freshman Intersectional at Conn. College, two freshman boats sailed to sixth and 10th place results in their respective divisions, yielding a ninth-place overall finish out of 12 teams. The A division was sailed by Nicolas Russo-Larsson and Jordana Hanselman, while the B division was manned by Massimo Soriano and Emily Shaw.
In other weekend action, the Crews Regatta at MIT on Sunday provided sailors who usually crew to have the chance to drive the boats. The Tufts duos of senior Meredith Groff and sophomore Margaret Rew in the A division and senior Katherine Shelley and junior Peggy Tautz in the B division combined for an 11th-place finish out of 20 teams, recording 128 points in 12 races between the two divisions.
Meanwhile, more experienced skippers sailed the remaining two regattas, the first of which was the Michael Horn Trophy Team Race at Harvard. There, the three Jumbo boats exhibited some strong team-race sailing, emerging with a fourth-place finish out of 10 teams. Although the Jumbos got off to a slow start, losing their first three races, a rebound of sorts left them with a 9-10 record at the end of the weekend.
"We started off with three losses at the beginning of the day because we hadn't really sailed FJs in a while, and our starts were poor," senior Peter Bermudez said. "But then we had some time off on the dock since it was a team race, and we talked and got on the same page. Then we had better starts as the day went on ... The wind picked up and it made tacking and gibing not as crucial."
Bermudez noted that what the team lacked in boat handling was somewhat nullified by the higher boat speed generated by the stronger breeze.
In the team-race format where positioning is of the utmost importance, shaky starts left the Jumbos in a poor position early on.
"[We could have worked on] communicating during the start," Bermudez said. "Since it was a team race, it was a pretty small line and there were times -- since we hadn't sailed together much -- when we weren't really on the same page getting off the starting line. [We were] messing each other up because we were too close to each other."
The first Tufts boat was sailed by Bermudez as skipper with seniors Francine Magasinn and Zoe Nourallah splitting time as crew; in the second, freshman Andrew Foster took the helm with classmate Henrietta Bright crewing; in the third, freshman Renee Gagne sailed with classmate Midori Tanaka.
All things considered, these three boats, sailing without much experience together and having two freshman skippers at the helm, performed exceptionally well.
"I was pretty happy with how I sailed," Bermudez said. "[Magasinn, Nourallah and I] were sailing pretty fast. We were usually one of the first ones to the mark. I was happy with Andrew and Renee being freshmen sailing on the Charles and in FJs ... They improved a lot."
In what marked the Jumbos' strongest performance of the weekend, two Tufts boats took fourth out of 17 at the Rhode Island State Championships at Salve Regina. The A division boat, sailed by juniors Andrew Criezis and Jennifer Watkins, took third in its division, while the B division boat, sailed by senior tri-captain Dan Altreuter and sophomore Sara Carnahan, finished seventh in its division. The two boats combined for a solid 73 points in 12 total races, only two points behind third-place finisher Roger Williams' 71.
"Overall, I think we did pretty well," Criezis said. "I was really happy with my crew [Watkins] and I ... getting our boat speed down in 420s. [Watkins] really worked hard and it showed -- it made all the difference. She was on top of her game."
The Jumbos were the definition of consistency in the regatta, the only team to finish in single digits across all 12 races. While the team had its slip-ups here and there, an overriding trend of success kept the Jumbos in contention throughout the entire weekend. The key to this success, as is most often the case in competitive sailing, was boat speed.
"We finally got our boat speed down," Criezis said. "We were fast in a big breeze because we're pretty light. If you can sail a boat without having a heavy crew come in, you can go faster.
"Our main goal [was] just to get a clean start," he continued. "Most of the time, we started towards the pin end because the wind was shifting left all day, so going left was favored. We'd pinch really hard off the line to create a lane."
While positioning could be considered the most important element of a successful start in the team-race format, boat speed off the line ends up being most critical in traditional fleet racing. On several occasions, the Jumbos struggled to hit their stride off the line early on.
In such a left-moving breeze, the ideal tactic, as Criezis noted, is to start at the pin end of the line, as it will provide the most direct route to the windward mark. Winning the pin at the start, however, brings along with it the danger of getting "sat on" by all of the other boats absent good acceleration off the line. And if sailors are struggling to keep the boat flat because of the weight, the problem can materialize in a start covered at the back of the fleet with no boat speed.
"Two of the starts we messed up pretty badly," Criezis said. "We got caught tacking and losing control, and we kind of got stalled out because we were a bit lighter and it takes a bit more to get going."
For a majority of the team, last weekend's regattas marked the end of the fall season. But the remainder of the Jumbos will continue to practice their starts at length in preparation for this weekend's ACCs, the culmination of Tufts' fall season efforts.
