Radcliffe Sailors Win Regatta; Freshmen Edge Coast Guard

Powered by a blustering wind that left seven of their competitors' boats capsized in a chilly Charles River, the Radcliffe varsity sailing squad won the two-day Victorian Coffee Urn Regatta here last weekend for the second consecutive year.

The Radcliffe team beat second place Boston University by 23 points and outsailed nine other squads, including strong teams from MIT, Jackson and Simmons.

The best sailing was in the B Division, where skipper Pam Mack and her crew Sarah Herrick finished five races in first place and five in second place for a regatta total of 15 points.

Mack, who is in her first year of competition, was the low-point skipper of the division.

"The sailing was ridiculous," she said. "On the first day the wind kept shifting 180 degrees and the second day was windy and very cold. The people who fell in must have frozen."

In the A Division team captain Marie Roehm skippered a first-place boat with Becky Maher and Lora Fleming sharing crew duties, racing single-sail interclub dinghies.

Squad coach Mike Horn said the sailing of both skippers was "remarkably consistent."

The Harvard freshman squad won the Freshman Dinghy Invitational at Coast Guard by one point last Sunday for their first victory of the season.

The winds on the Thames River in New London, Conn., were so strong and gusty that the judges required skippers to hoist their storm sails.

"It was windier and colder than hell," Russell Long, the B Division skipper, said.

Several boats capsized during the race, and several skippers fell into the river when their hiking straps broke.

Jim Hammitt skippered the A Division boat with Bucknell Webb crewing; Long and Robert Dubois manned the B Division boat.

The Harvard varsity squad finished fourth in an invitational race at Tufts on Mystic Lake last Saturday and fifth against MIT on the Engineers' end of the Charles last Sunday.

At Tufts the A Division boat with Chris Hornig and John Egel placed fourth, as did the B Division boat skippered by Steve Saudek and Kevin Gaughn.

In the race at MIT, Tom Reps and Peter Howe skippered their boat to a fourth place in the A Division; David Poor and Bruce Howie finished fourth in Division B.

Coach Horn said the wind at MIT "coming off the Cambridge shore behind the MIT buildings" was "very strange."