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| postponed team members |
The
Michigan Sailing once again traveled to the east coast over the past
weekend to participate in one of the marquee events of spring college sailing, the Truxtun Umsted hosted by the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. This is a
fantastic regatta because the Naval Academy has enough boats (20 420’s, FJ’s,
Lasers, and Laser Radials) for 4 divisions to compete at a time on the Severn River
instead of the normal college format of 2 Divisions sharing 1 fleet of 15-20
boats. The team left Ann Arbor at around 2 pm and arrived at the house of our hosts, Liz and Rusty Gowland, at around 11 pm. Saturday featured frustrating conditions on the Severn River, which included mostly cloudy skies, 50 degree temperatures and a lack of wind for most of the day. For four hours the race committee tried to start races but all attempted races were abandoned part way through because of the lack of consistent wind. Everyone thought that the day was over at 4 pm when volunteers at the academy fired up the grill and began to serve hamburgers, hot dogs and potato salad, which even led some competitors to begin de-riging their boats. The picnic was soon interrupted when the race committee announced that the wind had filled in and races were about to begin. 4 races were completed by 7 pm in a fresh 10-15 knot northerly breeze. The team then returned to the Gowland house to enjoy some homemade crab cakes, a dip in their hot-tub and some much needed rest.
Sunday featured much better sailing conditions on the Severn River: cloudy skies, 45 degree temperatures and a 5-15 knot northerly breeze allowed for 8 races to be completed. Our team finished 14th in A division (Matt Graham '13 and Karinne Smolenyak '15), 16th in B (Ryan Seago '14 and Jean Rafaelian '16), 20th in C (Braden Engstrom '16 and Austin Stevens '14) and 18th in D (Tom Etheridge) and 19th overall. Overall, the team performed much better on Sunday as a whole since Saturday was the first time on the water for most of our sailors due to the frozen state of Baseline Lake and almost all teams were varsity programs. This was the team’s first dinghy fleet-race regatta of the season and we are looking forward to improve our fleet racing skills next weekend at Notre Dame for the Freshman Ice-breaker and at the Boston-Dinghy Cup hosted by MIT and Harvard.
-Ryan Seago '14
