Sailors Face Coast Guard In Title Defense Saturday

Bad weather has forced competition for New England intercollegiate team sailing championship into its third weekend, with only the final series between Harvard and Coast Guard remaining. Strong winds and rain made it virtually impossible to sail all the scheduled races last Saturday and Sunday.

The Crimson team, defending the title it won last fall, had no trouble in its elimination series on the weekend of November 3, taking six straight races in a round-robin event. While Harvard was soundly trouncing MIT, Coast Guard took seven out of eight races from BU in their elimination series.

Last weekend the regatta continued on the Thames river in New London, Conn., dispite the heavy wind and rain. There Crimson skippers Carter Ford, Mike Horn, Mike Lehmann, and Dave Stookey left BU far behind in four consecutive encounters, earning a berth in the finals to be held this weekend, weather permitting. At the same time Coast Guard defeated MIT five to one.

When northwesterly winds reached 35 knots, the final best-of-seven series between Harvard and Coast Guard was postponed for a week. The Crimson sailors hope to revenge an earlier encounter with the Coast Guard Academy in which they lost the Erwin E. Schell Trophy by a small margin.