Men and Women Yachters Prepare for Coming Meets

Hot off a strong third-place performance last week in the Radcliffe Regatta, the women's sailing team, led by skippers Lauren Norton and Ronnie Sebok, will travel to Naragansett Bay near Providence this weekend to compete in the Northeast championships.

Meanwhile, on the Charles, the vachtsmen will compete against Boston University and MIT for the Obert trophy in the Greater Boston Dinghy championships.

At Brown, Norton and Sebok, whose boats will be crewed by Lisa Glen and Deirdre Wilde, need at least a third-place finish to qualify for the North American championships that will be held in June.

"Both Lauren and I have beaten all the people who are going to be there at one time or another," said Sebok. "We just have to be consistent and win."

The same holds true for the men, who are ranked 15th in the nation and who have been riding both the crests and troughs all year long.

"This season has been a little frustrating." said coach Mike Horn. "We've come very close to doing extremely well in some of the races."

Perhaps the best example of this "so-close-vet-so-far" performance occurred in the New England Team Race Championships. Horn said the yachtsmen there "sailed well on the water," but lost what appeared to be first place to upheld protests on land.

"There were some capsizes, and we got some bad breaks," Horn said.

Saturday, though, the men will have a chance to reverse this trend, while preparing for next weekend's national qualifying race in New Haven.

"We'll have a little advantage with our smaller interclubs (12 1/2 footers), but everybody knows the water conditions pretty equally," said junior Captain Craig Shank.

"We'll just have to keep our heads clear and sail fast--not much different from any other weekend," he added.