“All the teams were up and down in their scores,” Tulloch said. “It was something that nobody could interpret and nobody could understand.”
The conditions were both a challenge to Harvard and a boon—however inconsistent Harvard was, its opponents were worse, as the Crimson finished out of the top 10 in fewer races than any of its competitors.
“We were able to put up a more consistent front than the rest of the teams were,” Tulloch said.
The 20 teams competing in the Truxtun Umstead comprised most of the nation’s best, but the regatta underscored the weakness of biweekly Sailing World rankings, with No. 10 Harvard and No. 20 Navy besting six of the nation’s top-10.
The results bode well for a Crimson team which is finding its sea legs after a dry season and which is eyeing long-term championship prospects.
“We’re really starting to turn it up. We’ve had three weeks of practice and everything’s starting to click,” Johnson said. “Practices are competitive and overall, we’re just getting better as it gets later in the season.”
WOMEN’S SAILING
The No. 4 women’s team did not enjoy the same success as the co-ed squad, finishing 12th in an 18-team field at the St. Mary’s Women’s Intersectional.
Harvard sailed 10 races in Flying Juniors, and like the co-ed squad, the women had to cope with light and shifty winds.
With junior captain Sloan Devlin at skipper and sophomore Christina Dahlman crewing, the A-division finished 14th.
The A-division had a difficult regatta, although its results are negatively skewed by a single disqualification.
“[Conditions were] definitely problematic, but for me, it was a more fundamental problem of not having my head in the game as I needed to,” junior captain Sloan Devlin said.
Junior Jess Baker skippered and senior Daphne Lyman crewed the team’s B-boat to a ninth-place finish in its division. Baker and Lyman finished in the top 10 five times and in the top five twice.
“Our major problem was starting,” Devlin said. “I had one good start the entire regatta, and that’s not going to cut it at a high level.”
—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.