Sailors partake in weekend of competitive fleet racing
The co-ed sailing team headed to Boston and Kings Point this weekend, while the women’s team cruised into fourth in Rhode Island.
Yale Athletics
The Yale sailing teams have continued to sturdily sail the Charles and Providence rivers, looking towards postseason fleet and team training.
The weekend allowed sailors to get back in the fleet racing mindset, as they placed third at the Admirals Cup and tenth at the Boston Dinghy Club Challenge Cup. Kings Point saw a light breeze on Saturday, but anticlimactic winds the next day led to only one race taking place. Nearby in Rhode Island, the women’s team came by in fourth place, despite a precarious eastward wind.
“This past weekend was a challenging weekend with tricky conditions, but I was able to learn a lot and continue to get better moving forward,” Nathan Sih ’25 said. “As we near the end of the season, I will continue to keep practicing hard and trying to improve all the way up until nationals at the end of May and beginning of June.”
In Kings Point, the Bulldogs started off by staying in the top five, but ultimately fell out of first place towards the end of the day.
Although overall Yale placed tenth in Boston, Jessi Avila-Shah ’25 and teammate Mateo Farina ’25 placed second in their division, taking advantage of the lighter and shiftier winds that Sunday brought to the Charles.
“This weekend was a pretty classic weekend on the Charles River with a shifty breeze,” Avila-Shah said. “I thought our team was good in terms of maintaining good boat speed and fleet race starts.”
The No. 2 ranked women’s team competed with higher stakes this past weekend at the NEISA Fleet Race Champs, a week after their win at the NEISA team race championship.
The team came out in fourth out of the top 16 teams, so they did not receive automatic qualifying berths for the ICSA Women’s National Championship. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University received this honor as they placed first and second in the races.
Battling the shifty conditions for the Reed Trophy were skippers Mia Nicolosi ’25, Emma Cowles ’25 and Megan Grimes ’24, with crews Helena Ware ’23, Sarah Moeder ’26 and Carmen Berg ’26.
Regardless of the weekend’s results, all the Eli sailors are looking forward to their postseason practice from May into June.
“I’m looking forward to postseason practicing and really refining our skills before nationals,” Jack Egan ’25 said. “Everyone can always improve their boat handling, so that’s what we will be working on.”
According to Sih, once the academic year ends, the team will be practicing twice a day without worrying about schoolwork.
This weekend will see the Bulldogs compete for an automatic berth to the coed fleet race nationals at the New England Dinghy Champ. The breezes will be shifty, but the team will look to be shiftier.