By Nick Judson
Contributing Writer
On Saturday the Whalers sailing team finished up its season with a strong fifth-place finish at the Cape and Islands Fleet Racing Championship. Their strong showing in fleet racing capped off a successful season that included a second-place overall finish in the Cape and Islands standings for team racing and their best record ever since the team started competing in 1995.
On Wednesday the team traveled to Saquatucket Harbor to compete against Harwich in their season team-racing finale, where the Whalers came away with a 3-0 win after a hard-fought battle in big seas and 10 knots of wind. This win pushed the Whalers to 9-3 in the league and 10-4 overall, boosting them past Barnstable in the team-racing league standings.
On Thursday and Friday the coaching staff decided to shake things up a bit in preparation for the fleet-racing championship on Saturday by inviting a number of very experienced guest skippers to battle it out with the current sailors at practice. By adding the high-caliber competition, the Whalers practiced with more boats on the water than they normally have, forcing them to focus even harder on the starts with more boats to compete against.
On Saturday the Whalers would compete against 12 boats in each of two divisions and the practice helped them get used to not only a more crowded starting line, but also to focus on difficult competition throughout an entire race.
With the addition of Justin Assad, head coach of the University of Vermont sailing team and Nantucket Yacht Club youth racing director; Emily Taylor, Nantucket Community Sailing program director; Matt Beck, Nantucket Yacht Club principal race officer; accomplished one-design and keelboat racer Susan Storey; and alumni sailors Casey and Russell Bartlett, the Whalers had their hands full.
In the beginning they appeared a bit intimidated by their opponents, but after a few starts they began to improve, becoming more aggressive and focusing on defending and establishing better positions on the race course.
On Thursday it was puffy out of the northeast with 10- to 15-knot winds, and on Friday it was a light southwest breeze of two to eight knots. As it turned out, Saturday’s early races were sailed in the light and variable conditions the team trained in on Friday, and the last few races on Saturday were in the 10- to 15-knot range, just like Thursday.
As the breeze lightly filled in Saturday on the New Bedford Community Boating course, Adam Ceely and Jesse Lang, sailing in the A Division, went out and had two rocky starts, but the light-wind pointers they received on Friday paid off as they ground down the fleet in both races to finish with two fifths. In the B Division, Annie Sager and Meaghan Lynch got off to a great start with a first in the first race but then faltered with an eighth in the second. Ceely and Lang went back out and after a fifth in the third race they had a near-perfect start and only let one boat get past them upwind and held on for a second-place finish. In B division races three and four, Sarah Erichsen came in to skipper with Lynch and after a rough start in race three they finished ninth, but rallied back in the next race with a solid sixth-place finish. Ceely and Lang then finished off the A division series with a fifth-place finish in race five, locking up fourth overall in A, only seven points behind third-place Martha’s Vineyard. Sager and regular crew Julianne Costello then came in to race the final race in the B Division and with a strong start rounded the weather mark in third, lost a boat on the downwind leg, but then passed two boats to finish second, tying them with Martha’s Vineyard for fifth place in B division. After reviewing the scores, Nantucket won the tiebreaker against the Vineyard because of its second-place finish in the final race. At the end of the fleet-racing regatta Nauset was the overall winner, with Dennis-Yarmouth in second, Dartmouth third and Martha’s Vineyard in fourth. Nantucket’s combined A and B Division score put it in fifth overall, only 12 total points out of second.
The Harwich win on Wednesday locked the Whalers securely into second overall in the league in team racing and although Nantucket won 3-0, the team had to work hard from behind to take the series. In all three races Nantucket led at the first mark, but after dying winds filled in from behind, the breeze allowed the Harwich boats to catch Nantucket by the leeward mark. In race two Nantucket rallied back to the lead and then the hiking strap in Erichsen and Lynch’s boat broke, sending Lynch over the side into the big seas. After a quick recovery by Lynch, Harwich was now in the lead but the Whalers were determined to win and caught them right at the finish by inches and took the win in race two. Race three was a photocopy of race two and at the leeward mark Ceely and Elisabeth Reed performed a perfect pass-back to get Erichsen and Lynch ahead and Nantucket won the race and the series with a second-third-fifth. The 9-4 record compiled by the Whalers is their best ever in team racing.
Nick Judson is the executive director of Nantucket Community Sailing and the coach of the Nantucket High School sailing team.
|
