The Crimson sailors, fresh from one of the most successful weekends in recent years, are a solid favorite to win the first Ivy League dinghy championship, on the Charles this Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday, Carter Ford and his tested crew of Mike Horn, Peter Drake, and Rock Pring swept to a first place finish in trials for the New England Sloop Championships at the New London base of the Coast Guard Academy.

The win over second-place University of Rhode Island and five other teams was so commanding that the Crimson could have packed up and gone home without even sailing the final race. Both Harvard and U.R.I. now qualify for the finals, which will be sailed on Oct. 27-28 against the winners of two more elimination series.

On Sunday, the Crimson successfully defended the Knapp Trophy (Big Three Championship) with an impressive victory over Princeton and Yale. Skippers Ford, Horn, and Mike Lehmann were 57 points ahead of the Tigers, and swamped Yale 259 1/2 to 170.

Princeton's man-made Lake Carnegie has many lurking pitfalls, not the least of which are an average depth of four feet and an abundance of weeds. Princeton sailors are accomplished experts at cleaning weeds out of the rudder and centerboard without losing boat speed and were accordingly a pre-meet favorite.

But Harvard's crew, the same one that captured the trophy last fall, found the shifty and occasionally strong breezes much like the Charles, and averaged a whopping 28 out of 33 points per race.