CNU Sailing

After a short delay, the wind filled in nicely from the south east at 5-10 mph on Saturday and remained fairly steady all day. The great racing wrapped up around 5pm. Eight races were sailed in each division, three protests were heard, resulting in two disqualifications. Sunday started out light with approximately a half hour delay. Racing resumed around 10:15 and two races were sailed in each division before the wind lightened and began to shift radically. Racing was abandoned at 1pm.

How can a team have so much fun while doing so poorly? I guess now we know. As you can tell by now, having lost so many of our best sailors to transfers, academic scheduling, and other problems, we are spending more time giving new, developing people time on the water.

But William & Mary is a great host and the James River is a great sailing venue. This year the weather was beautiful, if only really sailable on Saturday. Warm temperatures and sunny skies prevailed. The winds on Saturday were excellent. Bur all of our “best friend schools” in the south were there, Tech, Virginia, Hampton, Salisbury, Maryland, St. Johns, William & Mary, with the fleet filled out by George Washington and America U.

We didn’t expect to qualify for the America Trophy at Cornell and we didn’t. Indeed, the coach got so caught up in giving developing players tiller time that we barely got a guaranteed spot at the Grant regatta, also to be held at William & Mary in two weeks.

In so many ways, this regatta showed what is so great about college sailing. All the sailors from the division that was not on the water gathered on the observation dock, soaking up the sun and socializing. It was difficult to tell who was from which team, so mixed were the teams. That is until they put their pinnies on and took to the boats. The William & Mary team did a terrific job as hosts and “Doc” Griffin had everything organized to perfection. The whole weekend was simply great and 50+ sailors singing “Happy Birthday” were special. I’ve tried to keep the date secret for years but I’m now too old to care. I might add that having several of the team’s parents there was extra special.

We didn’t make it to the America, but our good friends from Virginia and Hampton did and we’ll be having Hampton practicing with us over the next two weeks to give them time in 420s which are boats that are sailed at Cornell.

One special accomplishment for CNU we should note. Taylor Gray and Lynn Ball took a fist place in race 9A, taking the start and improving their position all race long. It was easily our “high water mark” for the event.

Thanks to the sailors, coaches and the whole William and Mary Sailing team for making this a class event. Thanks also to the community of First Colony for letting us be their guests at the marina and sail in such a wonderful venue.

The MAISA/SAISA is an annual meeting of teams from the Middle Atlantic InterCollegiate Sailing Association, ours, and the South Atlantic InterCollegiate Sailing Association which is the conference just to the south of us. This isn’t a regatta we go into expecting to win. Rather we use it to give our developing sailors an experience in an intersectional regatta where they meet teams other than those they see so often. This year we used four different skippers and two crews who mixed in various combinations, seeking to find the better pairings.

As expected, our results were quite mixed and we found ourselves dueling with one of our favorite teams, the University of Maryland to stay out of last place. This we did with some good final races by Maxwell Plarr, Kira Munger, Victoria Miller and Brennan Russell.

Perhaps the best race for the team was one in which we lost a protest. Victoria and Brennan were coming to the windward mark on the starboard layline. One of the SAISA teams came across her bow on port and caused a collision with Victoria that sent her into the path of two more starboard tackers. Victoria protested, as she should have and then did her penalty turns that would not be necessary if the offending SAISA team were disqualified. However, in the process of doing her penalty turns, she inadvertently crossed back inside the mark. That meant she had not properly rounded the mark. Still, she might have been given redress if the SAISA boat were found guilty.

Note here that while we usually give everyone the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not they are lying in a protest meeting, I saw this incident through the binocs and nothing I saw contradicted Victoria’s account and everything did contradict the SAISA skipper who flatly denied any contact. The protest committee disallowed the protest based on this reasoning: There was no damage to the boats and there was no third party witness to the contact. Therefore, no contact, no foul. This is a logic with which I and a number of coaches have a serious problem. Once the verdict had been given, Victoria did the proper thing and withdrew from the race. This brought some very surprised expressions to the protest committee’s faces. If she were so honest in this, how could she have been otherwise in the testimony? The next day, one of the members of the protest actually apologized for the committee’s decision, saying he did not believe the decision was correct and he had been in the minority. But this was a victory for Victoria in that she handled herself with confidence and grace. This experience will serve her well and displayed her strong sense of right and wrong. I, as her coach, couldn’t be more proud of her.

Sometimes you win more by losing than you do by winning and in our book, Victoria was a real winner.

IMAGE: Our heroine, Victoria

On Saturday there was absolutely no wind. However, we had pizza for lunch, caught some rays, played a lot of frisbee, built a new horse shoe pit for future no-wind days, and found the best possible use for Hobie trampolines. Sunday started with little wind and we blew off the first race. Eventually the wind built and we got one full rotation of 28 races for the eight teams.

Hampton University was the winner with CNU 1 in second and Webb Institute in third. Congratulations to the winning team: Shane Horseford, Athnel George, Andrew Shoemaker, and Ian Guggliardo.

Thanks go to Kate McClintock, Victoria Miller, Maggie Gore, Dara Gruber, Caitlin Bowman, Max Plarr, Lynn Ball, and the entire CNU team for their efforts. Thanks also to coaches Doc Griffin, Alex Ambrosio, and Gene D’Allesandro for handling protests. Special thanks to Chris Kennedy and Madeline Gill from UVA for committee work help.