CNU Sailing

From the Hosts: Saturday 8A races and 6B races sailed in Washington Sailing Marina Lagoon. Wind was NW 10-15 before dying at the end of the day. Sunday 8B and 6A races completed. Congrats to Navy for winning and to Maryland and CNU for qualifying for the America Trophy.

This was a pretty interesting regatta for our team. Kate McClintock, our B skipper, was probably in no condition to sail, but without her, we would have had no chance at all of qualifying for the America Trophy Regatta. Indeed, our team has been so depleted this spring that we barely have enough sailors to fulfill our commitments. When one other member of the team who was to be our backup dropped off the team on Friday morning within hours of our departure for Alexandria, we left with just four people, the minimum we could have. Matt Lythgoe and Amy Polhemus sailed very well for us in A Division and placed eighth (tied in points with Maryland in 7th). But Kate struggled with a bronchial infection that got progressively worse and in each of her last three sets of two races, her first race was a strong top five, but as she weakened, her second race was a double digit. Finally, by the last set on Sunday, she simply couldn’t continue and, without our backup, we had to sit out the final two B Division races and picked up 36 points we shouldn’t have earned. Going into the last two races we were well ahead of both Maryland and Hampton. Hampton had already qualified, and we would still qualify if we finished behind Maryland, but we didn’t want to be the last team to qualify. Still, even with the extras points, our 104 point lead over the next potential qualifier kept us in eighth place and we qualified.

IMAGE: Matt, Kate, Amy & Max

It was especially nice having Matt’s and Amy’s parents join us on Saturday. Kate’s mother, Ruth, was with us the entire weekend and we enjoyed her company at dinner on Saturday night. It has been quite nice having team member’s parents attend events this spring. Maxwell’s parents met us in Annapolis last week.

Matt, Amy, Kate and Maxwell Plarr, who crewed for Kate and did a great job in a position he never expected to fill, gave their all and represented CNU well. Sometimes when we are faced with long odds and real adversity our team members do their best, as they did at Georgetown.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 8:18 PM and is filed under 2007-2008 Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.