CNU Sailing

Newport News, Virginia wasn’t immune from the same light air that plagued the east coast on this March weekend. While our Saturday racing was light, we did complete six races in each division before the wind dropped to nothing.

It was unfortunate that we had absolutely no wind on Sunday because there were close battles all up and down the listings. Delaware and Virginia waged a close battle all day Saturday with Delaware holding a 3-point advantage when racing was stopped. Two points separated CNU and William & Mary for 3rd and 4th, W&M had a one point edge on Hampton and Hampton took 5th place over Maryland by 3 points for a 5th place finish.

IMAGE: Deep Creek was a pretty dismal place on Sunday.

All but one of the teams were regulars at CNU events and we were particularly pleased to have Webb make the long trip down for the second time this spring. They also attended our 2on2 Team Racing Clinic earlier in the year. The CNU team is looking forward to returning the visit for the Engineer’s Cup in May.

IMAGE: John Griffin “holding court.”

For CNU we gave three new sailors the chance to sail and Brennan Russell, Tyler Myers, and Meghan Magee all gave us reason to believe they will be sound contributors in the future. Special thanks go to CNU team members Ben France, Lynn Ball, Tyler Million, and Maxwell Plarr for their hard work on the Committee and Maxwell for skippering in A Division.

We were pleased to have Sam Ficksman from Hampton, John Griffin from W&M, and Gary Bodie with us. Gary’s daughter, Kelly sails for William & Mary.

Congratulations to Delaware sailors Eric Benning, Kelsey Adams, Katie Cross and Chris Murtens for winning the 2009 Icefree and many thanks to all our competitors for being wonderful guests. The interaction and camaraderie between all of the teams was typical of the great relationship that exists between our southern region sailors.

IMAGE: Sunday was all about socializing, sleeping and catching up on school work.

Only one A Division Race was sailed on Saturday due to virtually no wind. On Sunday the first race started right at 9:30AM with about 6-10 out of the SSW.  Breeze slowly lightened throughout the day and the last race of B was sailed in about 3 knots of a dying southerly so the R.C. called it a day around 3 PM.  Many thanks to the ODU sailors who spent the first weekend of their spring break running races.

This was a great event for the CNU team. Our fifth place finish was exceptionally good and the fact that both our A Division and B Division pairs placed fifth in their respective divisions was a display of balance that we found most encouraging for the rest of the season.

On Saturday Ben and Lynn got mauled at the start of the first and only race sailed that day and the best they could do was a 10th. But on Sunday they sailed better and better with a bullet in the 4th race. Jessica and Tyler had a great regatta and were most impressive in recovering from a pair of poor starts in the last two races. Their 4th in the final race to preserve our 5th place over Navy was a very impressive performance.

The winds at ODU were pretty tricky, but our team handled them well. Best of all, whenever things were going badly, everyone kept their focus and tended to improve as the race went on. An extra note of thanks goes to Max Plarr who served as the ”ground crew / back-up” for the event.

All in all, this was an absolutely great event as we start to move into the “meat” of the season. For the next few weeks we will be at home or close to home with events at CNU and Hampton. Next week we’ll host the Icefree Invitational at the CNU Sailing Center.