Varsity Yachtsmen Take Second In New England Championships

The varsity sailing team finished second to an M.I.T. contingent in the NEISA Dinghy Championships at Winthrop last weekend, qualifying with Tech as one of the two New England teams to compete in the National Inter-collegiate Championships at Annapolis in June.

Harvard almost caught the Engineers with a strong showing in the last race of the regatta, but an early lead enabled M.I.T. to wind up the weekend with 329 points, a slim four more than the final Crimson score. Favored Boston University finished fourth in the nine-team regatta.

For Crimson sailors it was a weekend of "firsts." For the first time this year skippers Carter Ford and Mike Lehmann both finished high in their divisions. With five firsts and two seconds Ford and crew Pete Drake captured individual honors with 117 points in "A" division. Lehmann and Mike Horn sailed into second place in "B" division with 108 points.

The Crimson sailors made their first good showing of the year in light winds. On Saturday, spotty wind and fog forced postponement of four races. But on Sunday, in off-again, on-again winds, a Crimson team whose best performances had come in heavy weather, was able to slice six points from M.I.T.'s first-day ten-point lead.

Flooded Flotation Tank

Within two points of the lead at the end of each division's tenth race, the Crimson skippers fell off the pace for good as both Ford and Lehmann sailed disappointing eleventh races. A flooded flotation tank in Lehmann's Tech Dinghy crippled the boat by adding almost 100 pounds of weight in the bow, and Lehmann limped home in last place.

Down six points going into the last race of the last race of the regatta, Lehmann's Firefly out-maneuvered the Tech boat all the way, but could pick up only two points from the M.I.T. lead.

As for June's Nationals, "we've had enough seconds; it's time for a first," Ford declared after the NEISA Championships. Traditionally strong showings by New England contingents in past Nationals boosts Harvard's hopes for a victory when ten teams race for the national title on Chesapeake Bay in June.