This past weekend marked one of the busiest weekends for our team that I can remember having. We hosted our Women’s conference tournament in Norfolk, and sent two teams to two major interconference regattas, the Admirals Cup at the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY and the Thompson Trophy at the US Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT. With the Admiral’s Cup being a three division event, ODU got the opportunity to field 5 different starting spots at major events.
I myself was sailing at the Admiral’s Cup in NY. We had beautiful weather on saturday, starting off the morning with 60 degrees, sunshine and 8-12 knots of wind. We got 6 races off before lunch and as a team, we were sailing well across all three divisions. After lunch, the wind picked up to a solid 15 knots gusting to 20, and we got in 8 more races for the day. Once the wind picked up, we subbed out Chloe for my heavy crew Miles. Miles and I hiked harder on saturday than we ever have in our lives, and it showed. We made A division our bitch. In the 5 races of big breeze conditions, our worst race was a 4. We also managed to sail a double bullet, or 1-1 set, a first for both Miles and I in college sailing.
After 14 races, we ended the day 2nd in A division only 6 points out of 1st, and 4th overall. Sunday began colder and wetter. 10 knots, 50 degrees, and spitting rain. We only had 5 races to sail on Sunday so we looked to make them count and move up into 1st place in our division. After the first three races, we had closed the gap to just 5 points behind Georgetown and decided to be more aggressive and try to actively put G-town behind us. Unfortunately our plan backfired. We ended up focusing too much on a single boat, and didn’t sail a fast race ourselves. Our last set was our worst of the regatta, increasing the gap between 1st and 2nd to 21 points.
We ended up 2nd in A, 5th in B, and 3rd in C to finish 4th overall! This again is the best ODU has sailed at a major interconference regatta. We continue to sail better and better as a team and look forward to showing what we are made of at our National Semi Finals in two weeks at the U.S. Naval Academy. Until then, we will focus on finishing off our academic semesters on a strong note, and practice hard to prepare for the competition.