Despite threatening skies and nippy autumn air, thousands of spectators descended on the banks of the Charles this weekend to watch some of the world’s top crews in the fall’s premier rowing event—the XXXIX Head of the Charles Regatta.

The Harvard and Radcliffe crews did not disappoint the assembled masses, each placing one crew in the top ten in both the Championship Eights and Lightweight Eights divisions.

Harvard

The Crimson heavies, a crew just five months removed from a national title and headed by six seniors, rose to meet its elite competition, taking fourth in the Championship Eights in a time of 14:16.940.

Harvard bested its collegiate competition, clocking in 1.88 seconds faster than Princeton, which finished fifth.

Utilizing more power per stroke rather than trying to increase the number of strokes per minute, the crew maintained its high energy level and avoided wearing itself down. But despite the comfortable pace, the Crimson’s time lagged behind the Tigers through the first three split-time posts, spaced approximately one-quarter of the course apart.

“I think we rowed really well for the first two miles,” senior four-seat Jordan Sagalowsky said. “We were at the cadence we wanted and it felt good.”

Trailing by two and then three seconds at the first two markers, Harvard transcended its fatigue and the tough conditions created by Northeastern’s slower boat, quickening its pace to slice Princeton’s lead to 0.35 seconds entering the final stretch of the course.

“The rowing came apart a little bit,” Sagalowsky said. “We got really close to Northeastern, so suddenly we were in the puddles their boat was leaving and the water was rougher.”

Still, the crew pushed onward and pulled away from the Tigers.

“Princeton wasn’t very far behind us,” Sagalowsky said. “We knew they’d be a lot stronger than last year. They have a lot of sophomores.”

The next-closest crew the Crimson has any chance of seeing again this year was the University of California, Berkeley, which finished more than 22 seconds behind Harvard.

The Crimson’s mastery of the Charles was upstaged only by the crews from the Princeton Training Center (14:03.401), Victoria City Rowing Club (14:12.115) and USRowing (14:16.143), the last of which finished less than eight-tenths of a second in front of the Crimson.

Behind the monikers, those crews are simply the U.S. national team, the defending world-champion Canadian national team and another U.S. national team boat.

“Confidence-wise, it’s great,” Sagalowsky said. “It shows we have very good base fitness.”