CNU Sailing

We hosted Virginia, Hampton, William & Mary, Maryland, Fordham, and Webb Institute at this year’s Icefree, the 17th year we have run this event. With one unfilled opening, we used the extra CNU team to give our developing sailors valuable experience.

Unfortunately, Saturday produced some of the lightest winds and strangest combination of clouds and fog we have ever seen. After drifting on the river for several hours, we towed the fleet back to the Center for lunch. This year we had beer steamed hot dogs with Bret and Sam Winters doing the chef’s thing. Finally, at about 1:30 we threw in the towel and turned the teams loose for an afternoon of other distractions. (You can only play Frisbee for so long.)

Sunday was better and though some didn’t get in gear early due to the start of day light savings time, we began racing early and got seven races in in both A and B Divisions by 1:00 PM and had the teams from the far north on their way home in good time. It was great having Fordham and Webb back again.

Fordham was clearly the best team, but both Hampton and Virginia gave them a run with Hampton taking second place by a single point. The entire spread sheet is attached giving the race by race scores.

For CNU, Tyler Myers & Sarah-Daye Hand turned in the best performance for the team and combined with Kira Munger& Maxwell Plarr to place 5th. Victoria Miller & Meghan Magee and Maggie Gore & Brennan Russell placed 6th. Maggie and Brennan in particular sailed some good races and also collected a DSQ, but that’s part of leaning. All in all, the coaches were pleased with much of what we saw and we have some clear areas that can be improved.

Special thanks go to Taylor Gray and Lynn Ball for Race Committee work, aided by Chris Kennedy from UVA on Sunday. Our newest team member, Caitlin Bowman was in charge of the Center on Saturday, and Dara Gruber from the CNU team filled out the Maryland team who were one sailor short. John Griffin from William & Mary, Alex Ambrosi from Hampton, and Kate McClintock from CNU were the coaches who helped with the regatta and dealt with our protests.

Conditions were great on Saturday, sunny with a 14kt NNW dying to 4kts NNE, puffy. Courses were gold cups and W-4s. It was pleasant Sunday morning with a WNW 8kt that died as the temperature rose to the 60s. We sailed 2 B races and 4 A division races. There was a slight right to left current and subtle shifts. We had to drop the last two A division races when the breeze shut off at 1:00. We abandoned the remainder of the races at 2:15. Races sailed were W-4s.

Our 16th place finish at this event wasn’t what we had hoped to accomplish. Since last September we have lost our #1 skipper to academic problems, our #2 has scheduling issues that have prevented her from sailing this spring, and one of our most promising new comers has transferred to a school that is specialized in his course of study. Our remaining team members are dedicated and willing, but we have a lot of work to do to get back to where we believe we should be. While our team finish was 16th, we finished 15th in both divisions which means we were better balanced than the team close to us.

While this will be a difficult season for us, it will also be an interesting one as we work to develop our many women sailors. I have no idea why, but we are attracting more women than ever. We now have 8 women on our 13 member team. Further, four of our five best prospects for the fall are women. Do I mind? Not one bit!

We had six teams in attendance at the Spring 2on2 Clinic at CNU; Salisbury, Hampton, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Drexel and CNU. Neither Webb nor Army was able to get out of the frozen north to attend.

The event consisted of three sessions, a morning classroom session and afternoon on-the-water session on Saturday and an on-the-water session on Sunday morning. The wind on Saturday was just about perfect for sailing in “the Creek.” This was necessary in order to allow for fast rotations. On Sunday morning what wind we had was out of the worst direction possible. However, team race practice isn’t so demanding with regard to winds. We simply wanted to create the situations teams have to deal with in 2on2 racing. We mixed and matched sailors to create seven teams. Though we didn’t get a full rotation, we got he practice we wanted.

With many of the spring events now 2on2s, we hope this instructional event will elevate the skill levels to provide better racing as more sailors understand the subtleties of this discipline.

We really didn’t keep scores other than for curiosity since we didn’t get a full rotation and many Sunday teams were made up of several schools. One CNU sailor crewed for one guest school and skippered for another. It was all a lot of fun.

The CNU team would like to extend its thanks to all the participants for their cooperation and contributions that helped make this a productive effort.

Good luck to all in this expanded season of 2on2 racing.