Three national championships in three weeks? The football team might be playing for an outright Ivy title on Saturday, but if the No. 1 Harvard sailing team has its way, it will capture its second and third national championships of the year this weekend.

Every year, the Intercollegiate Sailing Association awards six national titles: the Sloop National Championships and the Men’s and Women’s Singlehanded Nationals, which are held in the fall, and the Women’s and Coed Dinghy Nationals and the Team Racing Nationals, which are held in the spring. Based on the results of these six events, the Leonard M. Fowle ’30 Trophy is presented to the nation’s top all-around sailing team.

Harvard took an important first step to winning its second straight Fowle Trophy two weekends ago as co-ed captain Sean Doyle, junior Dan Litchfield and sophomore Cardwell Potts successfully defended their sloop national title, becoming the first Harvard team torepeat.

National Championships, Take One

College competitors do not traditionally sail sloops, 22-foot boats featuring a spinnaker in addition to the main sail and the jib and thus requiring three sailors.

However, these differences do not present much of a problem for sailors of the caliber of Doyle, Litchfield and Potts.

“If you’re good at sailing, you can sail almost any type of boat,” Potts says. “Having dealt with sloops before, we knew how to deal with the boat and how to make it go fast.”

That, of course, is an understatement. The Crimson called on the significant experience of two-time All-American Doyle, Litchfield, and Honorable Mention All-American Potts for the competition. Doyle, especially, according to Potts, “knows all the ins and outs of sailing.”

Still, Doyle was aware of the unique difficulties of sailing sloops going into the competiition.

“It’s so heavy you really need to be sure you’re doing the right thing,” he notes.

Even so, he was looking forward to the championships. “It’s really fun because you get to work as a team with people you don’t normally get to sail with,” Doyle adds.

Contributing to Doyle’s anticipation, the championships were held in his hometown of St. Petersburg, Fla. at the University of Central Florida, where his sister coaches the sailing team.

The competition began well for Harvard, as it triumphed in the first race. After a fourth-place finish in the second-race, the Crimson got off to good starts in each of the next three. With sloops, the start is especially important. The speed differences between boats are not significant, so good positioning off the starting line allows teams to control the entire race. Harvard proved this by taking second in the third race and going on to win the next two. Following these races, it appeared the fight for the championship would be a two-horse race.