The Harvard sailing team demonstrated its resilience this weekend, fighting through difficult conditions to secure another set of strong results at two regattas. Despite facing heavy rain and challenging, variable wind, the Crimson was able to collect a pair of top-ten finishes, including its second victory of the year.
“The conditions were especially tough with the hurricane winds and rain rolling through, but other than a few minor errors, our team had a solid weekend,” sophomore skipper Nicholas DiGiovanni said.
With the weather making racing difficult, consistency proved to be essential, and Harvard’s ability to find constancy on the water helped steer the team to success.
NICHOLAS BARNETT TROPHY
The Crimson not only won, but did so in decisive fashion at the combined scoring, in-conference regatta, hosted by Bowdoin and contested in FJs. The result saw Harvard beat out eight other schools and finish 23 points ahead of second-place Boston University.
Despite collecting a handful of top-three finishes, the Crimson A boat of sophomore skipper Jackson Wagner and sophomore crew Divya Arya finished the regatta as the second-fastest lineup in the A division, falling to BU by five points. However, Harvard’s B duo of sophomore skipper Nicholas Karnovsky and sophomore crew Alejandra Resendiz was dominant throughout the weekend. The pair ended up outside of the top 10 only once and brought home 10 finishes inside the top five spots across 18 races.
“The key was to be consistent as a team,” Resendiz said. “On Sunday, we had a northerly breeze that was far more confusing, but luckily our lead from Saturday helped to make up.”
The Crimson B boat’s 104 points meant that it outscored not only all other B crews, but every A crew as well, making it the top-scoring boat for the regatta. With the B boat having secured the leading spot, Harvard’s A lineup rounded out the podium in third, cementing the Crimson victory.
Harvard topped a number of strong perennial rivals en route to the win, including BU, Bowdoin, Tufts, and Northeastern, who finished second to fifth in that order.
MOODY TROPHY
Despite a dramatic shift in conditions at the University of Rhode Island-hosted bi-divisional regatta, the Crimson managed to maintain some consistency and secure a top-10 finish.
The first day was marked by a lack of wind, with only occasional gusts rippling the generally glass-like water. However, the weather would change abruptly by day two as remnants of Hurricane Matthew brought driving rain and strong winds to Rhode Island. Although the alteration caused several of the leading crews to slip up, Harvard was unable to capitalize on its’ rivals mistakes, finishing the weekend 10th in a field of 17 teams.
Racing in FJs, the Crimson’s A crew of junior captain and skipper Nick Sertl and sophomore crew Christine Gosioco remained largely unaffected by the shifting conditions.The duo ended up among the top 10 finishers in five of six races and cracked the top five twice along the way. At the end of the weekend, Sertl and Gosioco were the fourth-highest scoring A lineup, with their total of 40 points setting them a mere one point behind the A crews from Yale and Tufts.
The results of the Harvard B lineup of DiGiovanni and sophomore crew Lena Episalla suffered more in the changing wind, however. The pair finished in the top 10 in three races, but they were plagued by inconsistency. Battling with the tricky wind patterns and driving rain, the B boat’s finishes varied by at least three points between every race, and the duo never cracked the top half of competitors.
The conditions did not impact the Crimson as extensively as they did Brown, who sat in second place after the first day but fell to seventh after a string of bottom-half results. Nonetheless, the string of uneven results meant that Harvard was unable to replicate its victory at the regatta in 2015.
Despite only collecting a single victory across both divisions over the course of the regatta, Boston University took top marks on the weekend. Neither of the Terriers’ crews ever finished outside of the top nine spots, and that consistency carried them to the victory ahead of Bowdoin and Yale in second and third, respectively.–Staff writer Sam O.M. Christenfeld can be reached at schristenfeld@college.harvard.edu.
