Stiff Winds, Stiff Competition

In medieval justice, an ordeal by water tested the innocence of one accused of a crime. In collegiate sailing, the ordeal by cold water can still test the preparation of aspiring champions.

With only a week remaining until the Singlehanded National Championships, the Harvard sailing team’s sophomore Clay Johnson and freshman Kyle Kovacs pitted themselves against some of the best competition collegiate Laser sailing had to offer. With second- and third-place finishes in their respective divisions, the Crimson’s singlehanded sailors passed muster, leading the Crimson to eighth in a 20-team field at the Navy Fall Intersectional last weekend.

With 683 points, Harvard trailed overall winner Merchant Marine, which posted a final tally of 426.

Four divisions comprised the two-day regatta, as each school launched two full-rig dinghies, a 420 and a Flying Junior and two Lasers in 20 races. Sailors had to contend with a biting fall chill and brisk 12- to 22-knot winds while on the water for consecutive eight- to 10-hour days.

Sailing in the singlehanded C-division, Johnson won four of the 20 races, placing second or third in 10 more. With 69 points each, Johnson and Georgetown’s Andrew Campbell tied for first. Ties are broken by determining which sailor finished ahead of the other in more races, and Campbell topped Johnson in 11 of the 20 contests to bump the Crimson’s singlehanded threat to second place.

The two were fully 39 points ahead of third place.

“[Campbell] has a really good reputation as the best in the country, and he’s thought to be the favorite to win this weekend,” Johnson said. “The fact that I tied him definitely showed that I can compete and [be] a legitimate threat at winning nationals.”

Kovacs posted nearly equivalent results in the D-division, winning four races to place third.

Kovacs racked up 105 points in spite of sailing that didn’t always fulfill his own expectations.

“I feel [like I sailed] pretty well, but I made some big mistakes and flipped a couple of times,” Kovacs said.

Junior Sloan Devlin and sophomore Christina Dahlman notched a first-place finish in the first day’s eighth race to finish 12th in the A-division with 191 points.

Devlin and Dahlman managed to improve on an uncertain start, finishing six of their last seven races in the top eight.

“Even in the conditions, on the second day we definitely improved,” Devlin said. “If you look at the second day’s results, it was definitely encouraging.”

Juniors Jessica Baker, skipper, and Ruth Schlitz, crew, took 16th in the B-division with 278 points.

“It was, in general, a difficult weekend because it was pretty breezy, and we were sailing underweight,” Devlin said “We didn’t have as much weight in the boat, so we had problems keeping it flat.”

Devlin and senior Genny Tulloch will also join Johnson and Kovacs at the singlehanded championships this weekend. The two posted first- and second-place finishes in the New England Women’s Singlehanded Championships in September to qualify.

WOMEN’S SAILING

The Crimson’s women had a tricky time during the weekend, finishing 18th of 19 teams at the Yale Women’s Intersectional. With the water embroiled in a heavy chop and the breeze consistently blustering at 20 knots, Yale’s open-ocean course subjected sailors to extremes for which they could not have prepared.

Captain Daphne Lyman’s boat, skippered by freshman Elyse Dolbec, finished 18th in the A-division with 64 points. With sophomores Kristen Lynch at skipper and Cassandra Niemi at crew, Harvard finished 17th in the B-division, with 60 points.

“There were huge waves that we aren’t used to,” Lyman said. “We haven’t had any wind in practice, so we haven’t practiced in breeze and chop.”

Compounding the team’s difficulties was its small size. Lyman described her 235- to 240-lb. boat as especially light even for women’s racing.

“Because we were so light and so inexperienced and had such intense conditions, we were really not able to perform as well as we should have,” Lyman said.

Yale’s boats each won two of their four races on Saturday, combining for a scant 18 points to win the regatta.