Call it the Battle for the Charles.

OK, maybe the meet between the Harvard and MIT lightweight crews isn't as storied as other geographic rivalries. But the teams do share the same lapping waves, and it's nice for one crew to show the other who really owns the water.

For the moment, that would be Harvard. Yesterday, the Crimson maintained its undefeated record (3-0) by defeating the Engineers by three boat lengths.

Harvard finished in 6:18.0, while the Engineers crossed the line at the 6:28.4 point mark. The 10-second margin is much less than it has been in recent years, which speaks well for the amount that MIT has improved. Last season. Harvard finished in 6:15, while MIT took a whopping 6:40.

"I feel that we rowed technically very well," junior Matt Emans said, "and I feel that it identified some points in the race that we need to work on."

As much as the Engineers have bettered themselves, however, Harvard was looking on to other things. The Crimson goes down to Annapolis this weekend to take on Navy, which might be expected to put out good crews.

"We're really training for Navy on Saturday," senior Field Ogden said. "It is hard to go all out in a race when you're concentrating on another race. It prevented us from getting fired up."

Which wasn't that big of a deal. MIT is still MIT, and seven if Harvard wasn't quite at 100 percent, anything but a win would have been a surprise.

"The most important part of it for us was to get a good race in and keep our training up for Sunday," Ogden said.

It was Harvard's day all around.

The Harvard freshman crew also blitzed MIT, finishing in 6:36 to MIT's 6:56. In fact, the second and third crews for both the lightweights and freshmen won their races.