By Nick Judson
Contributing Writer
The Nantucket sailing team completed its busiest week of the season with regattas against Martha’s Vineyard, Barnstable, Tabor and the finals of the New England Fleet Racing Championships Sunday.
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Photo by Jim Powers
Meaghan Lynch, front, and Ben Rives sail against Tabor Academy at home Saturday. The Whalers lost all three team-racing regattas this week and finished 14th out of 15 teams in the New England Fleet Championships.
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On the team-racing side of things, the Whalers continue to battle, but still have not captured their first win of the season. They lost all three regattas, to 3-0 to Martha’s Vineyard Wednesday 3-0, 4-1 to Barnstable Friday and 3-0 to Tabor Saturday.
On Sunday, Nantucket competed for the first time ever in the New England Championships, where the top 15 teams in New England had been winnowed down from an original pool of 93 schools. The Whalers placed 14th overall against a field from which more than half of the teams competing had in the past eight years gone on to compete in the U.S. Nationals.
Sunday’s championship started out as a photocopy of last Sunday’s postponed finals. The teams met at the Bristol Yacht Club (R.I.) with almost no wind on the water and a forecast that was not promising. After calling around New England looking for wind and a quick coaches meeting, all of the teams packed up and moved to Marion, Mass., where there was at least seven knots of wind and Tabor Academy had agreed to host the event.
In fleet racing there are two divisions of racing – A and B – and each competing school has one crew in each division. The Whalers team included senior captain Russell Bartlett, senior Ben Rives, junior Meaghan Lynch, junior Trevor Lockley, sophomore Jesse Lang and freshman Adam Ceely. Bartlett and Lang competed in the A division while Ceely and Lynch competed in the B division.
Race one in the A division saw Bartlett and Lang set up for the start by the committee boat end and because a number of boats were piled up at that end, they quickly moved to duck away from the congestion to get into clear air. This strategy worked. They were able to get into clear air on the right side of the course, but the wind on that side died. As they battled back in light conditions they rounded the weather mark in 10th place.
On the downwind leg they were able to reel in the group of boats just ahead and as they worked the middle of the course on the next upwind leg they stayed in pressure and were able to get all the way back up into fifth place. On the last part of the weather leg Bartlett saw a puff of wind coming down the right side of the course and continued in that direction to try to capitalize on it but the pressure waned and that dropped them back to ninth where they held on until the finish.
In the next race the A team sailed a bit too far away from the starting line and when the wind died out they struggled to get back in time for the start and this put them at a huge disadvantage as they were not able to make up the distance and had what ended up being their worst race of the day. At this point the wind died completely and racing was postponed for an hour before a light zephyr filled in out of the exact opposite direction and then races resumed for the B division.
In the B division Ceely and Lang sailed aggressively, pushing the line and their competitors at the start, a tactic that brought them great results in the qualifying round. But in finals it put them over early in their first two races, giving their opponents a head start that was difficult to make up. They finished 13th and 10th, respectively.
In race three for A division the starting woes continued as Bartlett and Lang were over early at the pin, but staged a comeback, working themselves all the way back up to 10th before the finish. Race four in B division was Nantucket’s best result of the day as Ceely and Lynch were able to establish clear air at the start and were in the top 10 at the weather mark. After working to leeward of the group ahead, Ceely was able to sneak inside at the next mark and move up to seventh place. The last leg of the race had the standings shifting back and forth and the Whalers held on for an eighth-place finish.
The light winds and late start meant that time ran out and the series was over after only four races in each division were completed. At that point Nantucket was within striking distance in both divisions. The A crew was only eight points out of 10th position and four teams were within three points of each other. In B division Ceely was only eight points out of eighth place and three points out of 10th, tied for 14th.
This Friday and Saturday the Whalers will be in search of their first team win of the season as they sail against Harwich and Barnstable, both at home.
Nick Judson is the head coach of the Nantucket High School sailing team and the executive director of Nantucket Community Sailing.
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