Professor Steadman Hood Trophy

The first day of the Hood trophy saw warm shifty and puffy West winds. The mean wind went right all day (WSW to NW) as a cold front finally arrived requiring countless mark changes. West winds at Mystic Lake are very challenging making consistentcy in scores impossible in the 20 boat fleet. Harvard's A team of Alan Palmer and Quincy Bock made great comebacks from their few missed shifts to take the lead. Tufts solid performance in B with Nicolas Russo-Larsson and Roisin Magee has the Jumbos not too far behind.

Cooler temps and lighter winds are expected tomorrow for a hopeful six more races per division.

Sunday brought more great puffy winds to Mystic Lake, albeit shifty again. Like Saturday the wind blew across the lake but from the East today at 5-15 instead of Saturday's West 4-12. Harvard's lead hovered around 15 points until right near the end when it mushroomed to over 30 as alternates Brendan Kopp/William White overtook Tufts to win "B." Harvard's "A" boat continued to make high risk starts pay off it all but one race each day. Yale's Cam Cullman is back and combined with All-American Blair Belling to win "A" with very consistent sailing. South Florida sailed very well as top out-of-conference team in 4th.

Courses were mostly W/L four and five legs (offset and gate) but six leg races were used at the end to lengthen the course time when the breeze built on Sunday. Race management was challenging (well over 70 mark changes, mostly between races) but with the help of a port-line boat there were only two general recalls and many boats called over in the early races. Less boats over when competitors got used to the acceleration of the high-powered, lightweight Larks. In short, the fleet lined up much further back on Sunday than on Saturday. Four races were abandoned due to boats at the favored end boats laying the windward mark while the boats at the unfavored end had light air. There were no protests filed though it appeared only a little more than half the fouls resulted in penalty turns. There were no requests for breakdown despite several small problems with the masts.

Special thanks to score keepers Jamie Altreuter and Marissa Gallerani and to port-line personnel Andrew Meleney, Max Bulger, Renee Gagne, Midori Tanaka and Alum Dan Hurwit. Several other Tufts sailors helped out ashore keeping boats working; thanks all.

The following chart shows the relative rank of the teams as of the race indicated. Note that the races are ordered by number, then division, which may not represent the order in which the races were actually sailed.

The first place team as of a given race will always be at the top of the chart. The spacing from one team to the next shows relative gains/losses made from one race to the next. You may hover over the data points to display the total score as of that race.