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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Sailing notches strong finishes in season openers

Sailing-Photo
Caitlin Durand (front), MaryClaire Kiernan (center), hike out during the upwind beat, leading Bowdoin and Brown at the Mrs. Hurst Bowl hosted at Dartmouth in FJ's.

The co-ed sailing team began its fall season with two highly regarded tournaments over the weekends of Sept. 13 and Sept. 20: Yale's Harry Anderson Trophy located at Yale's own McNay Family Sailing Center, and the MIT/Boston University Hatch Brown Trophy Invitational located on the Charles River.

This past weekend, the Jumbos placed fourth out of 18 teams at the Hatch Brown Trophy, behind Yale, College of Charleston and Roger Williams University, but ahead of cross-town rivals MIT and Boston College.

Conditions along the banks of the Charles on day one were perfect for sailing, as a south-southwest breeze of eight to 14 knots made sailors enthusiastic about racing. But conditions on day two were less than ideal, with shifty winds between three and 10 knots from the southwest that made sailing challenging. In the end the Jumbos took second place overall in both the A and C divisions, but a 12th place finish in the B division sent them down to fourth place.

Senior crew Alec Ruiz-Ramon and his skipper, senior tri-captain Sam Madden, were able to take an impressively low 115 points in the A division as they won their fifth, seventh and eighth races. Yale cruised past everyone, winning the division with 79 points. The Jumbos in the C Division fared just as well, as senior skipper Duncan Swain and senior crew Erin Bondy scored merely 100 points, winning their first, ninth and 18th races to place just behind Yale with 99 points. The Jumbos' representatives in the B Division, senior skipper Dan Nickerson and senior crew Jamie Maffeo, had a tough day on the river, placing 12th overall in the division and scoring 181 points despite finishing second in their 10th race.

On the weekend of Sept. 13, the Jumbos also participated in the Harry Anderson Trophy at Yale University, where they placed ninth overall out of 18 teams. The A division led the way for the team, as the squad posted 85 points overall in a second place effort, only losing out to University of Vermont. Ruiz-Ramon, teamed with the combined effort of Madden and sophomore Alex Tong, won the fifth race and placed third in three others. In the B division, Nickerson and Maffeo worked together to take 11th overall, scoring 124 points to add to Tufts' final score of 209.

"As a team we were reasonably pleased with our early season results at MIT and Yale," Madden said. "As part of the A division, Alec and I are really excited about our two second-place finishes. However, it is still early in the season and there is a lot of sailing left, so we are focusing on really fine-tuning our sailing so that we can have continued success in the fall."

Although only a handful of Jumbos raced this past weekend, the team has just been made much larger by the addition of 16 freshmen.

"The freshmen are already making a huge impact and are making practice more productive," Ruiz-Ramon said. "It will be exciting to see how they grow as members of the team, and I'm really looking forward to that."

The Jumbos have their eyes set on the future, as they have some strong individual and team goals for the season.

"We'd like to perform well at ACCs in November, qualify for the match racing national championship in mid-October and continue to perform well at our weekly regattas to raise our performance ranking," Ruiz-Ramon said. "I personally started off the season very well with two fantastic weekends and am looking to continue building off our successes."

Madden has similar goals in mind.

"We want both our co-ed and women's teams to qualify for the Fall National Championships later this season," Madden said. "As for my individual goals, I hope to continue to sail well to help set us up for a podium finish at the fall championships."

Next, the Jumbos will race at Boston College's New England Men's Single-Handed Championship on Sept. 27 and 28, where they hope to improve on their finishes from this past weekend.