A team of seven consisting of Alex Ramos, Tom Etheridge, Alison Bradley, Liz Wallace, Mason Walters, Zack Nerod, and Nick Lipinski left for New Hampshire on a brisk Friday afternoon. The long drive there found us arriving at Dartmouth's campus during the end of their Homecoming ceremonies at roughly 1 to 2 AM. We finally arrived at Nick's aunt's house right off of campus ready to get some rest in preparation for stiff competition the next morning.
On Saturday morning, we arrived at the venue bright and early. The Dartmouth team was blasting a pleasant mix of 70s and 80s pop music to start the day with some fun. The racing started off with a postponement followed by several other delays and light, shifty racing in between. The wind came from the East which was directly across the lake from the club and though a series of large hill. This led to somewhat light, unexpected shifts--not unlike what we see at Baseline lake.
Sunday, however was a completely different animal. The breeze started at a strong 15-20 knots coming straight down the river from the South building with gusts easily surpassing 25 knots. Both skippers found it much harder to perform in the tormenting breeze as well as the various showers of freezing cold rain and hail.
Although we did not perform as well as we wanted, numerous lessons were learned and re-learned. As we left out first major competitive dinghy regatta of the season, we left tired, sad and beaten, but truly enlightened and full of desire for improvement.
--Alex Ramos, '15
