NEISA Women's Championship

A strong, moist southerly breeze brought challenging conditions for the first day of competition at the New England Women's Championship. Swimming was abundant as puffs ripped through the course at times with gusts to 40 occasionally followed by 12-15 knot breezes. Rightees were strong with a 'wall effect' by the starting area but the leftees just dropped in a seemingly random frequency. Steve Kirkpatrick did a fantastic job of getting in 10 races in both divisions while the MIT Sailing Team shared the duties of recording scores and posting them to tech score.

A Division sailed FJs all day while B Division sailed Harvard's 420s. Everyone will switch fleets for the final 6 races tomorrow. Lots can still happen as the top 11 teams will qualify for the National Semi Final Regatta in Newport in late May.

This regatta honors MIT's second Sailing Master, Jerry Reed, who helped start NEWISA in the mid 1960s as an alternative women's only sailing league. Reed also was instrumental in hiring MIT's first women's varsity coach, Stu Nelson, and convinced the athletic department to designate the team with varsity status.

Boston College is on top after one day but a whole bunch can change with an additional 12 races to go tomorrow.

Franny Charles, MIT Sailing Master

Sunday brought drizzly skies and much lighter conditions than Saturday. A short postponement was followed by tight racing in 3-8 knots of breeze from the SSE direction. There was one race abandoned due to the breeze flattening early in the race and the whole day was needed to get in the final 12 races with six in each division.

The MIT Engineers grabbed the lead in race 15 from the Brown Bears and never relinquished. Dartmouth hauled in Boston College to take the final podium position. This was the MIT Women's Sailing Team's first New England Championship in team history. Congratulations to the top eleven teams who have now qualified for the National Semi Final Championship in Newport, RI.

Boston University's Maia Agerup and Emily Croteau topped A Division and Hanna Steadman along with Emma Montgomery, Annabelle Hutchinson, and Emily Ito grabbing B Division honors. Steve Kirkpatrick expertly handled PRO duties all weekend along with the rest of the MIT Sailing Team recording finishes and updating the scoring program.

Becca Dellenbaugh, Megan Roche, and Tony Weiner volunteered their services as Umpires and Judges all weekend. They left the Rule 42 flag in the bilge of the motorboats throughout the competition.

Conference Commissioner Justin Assad hosted a speedy awards ceremony at the conclusion of sailing and the winners will be announced in a separate form shortly.

Franny and Lucy Charles

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.