Sailors Grab Second and Fifth in Opening Regattas

Harvard's senior-laden sailing team has yet to have a day of practice but it came up with a second and a fifth in two major events over the vacation and hosted an experimental coed regatta.

Abbott Reeve led the sailors to a second-place finish in the Boston Dinghy Club Cup over the weekend at the Coast Guard Academy. Reeve. with Phil DeNormandie as crew, was low-point skipper in Division A to top arch-rivals Skip White of the University of Rhode Island and Pete Nesbeda of M.I.T. The three dominated last Fall's competition.

Foul

In Division B Charlie Koch, Robbie Doyle and George Putnam combined for a third place. Doyle skippered the boat to six firsts but a capsize by Koch and a foul out by Doyle each gave the Crimson 14 points to account for U.R.I.'s victory margin.

Last spring the sailors won half a dozen regattas, but fell apart the last weekend in the New Englands and missed their chance for a berth in the North Americans, With a strong group of seniors, the Crimson seems ready to mount an effective bid to represent New England this year.

The sailors began the vacation at Annapolis with a fifth in the Owen Trophy, which they won last year. Sailing in their first event of the year, they missed fourth by a point. Navy with the home advantage completely dominated the weekend.

Hurt

"Having no practice definitely hurt us this week," coach Mike Horn said yesterday. "We were able to sail fast enough. but we weren't reacting instinctively to tactical problems as we normally would have. Also there were a few boat handling errors," he added.

The coed regatta on Sunday was the first for Harvard and Radcliffe and the first in New England. Men's, women's. and coed colleges were invited to enter. Of the eight entries, the top and bottom three finishers were coed schools, and the middle two were all male.

M.I.T.'s powerful woman squad led the Engineers to a narrow one-point finish over Harvard Radcliffe for first-place honors. Putnam and Janice Stroud in Division A and John Bowers and Doug Allen in Division B were the Crimson entrants.