Crimson Qualifies To Sail in Nationals

Favorable winds carried the Harvard sailing team through to the finals of the ICSA Coed Dinghy National Championship this past weekend.

The Crimson traveled to Seattle to compete in the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association Western Semi Finals and finished in the top-five thanks to the efforts of junior captain Alan Palmer and classmate Meghan Wareham. The tandem placed fourth overall in the A division, contributing 56 of the 116 points that Harvard put up on the scoreboard.

“Our primary goal was to qualify,” senior Michelle Konstadt said. “We were really happy that we were able to do so, but we were hoping to do better than fifth. We made some mistakes that cost us some points.”

The B division team, composed of Konstadt and juniors John Stokes and Quincy Bock, pitched in the remainder of the points with solid performances in the latter half of the stretch but ended in a weak final race. The team came in sixth overall.

“I think we showed that we could hang with whoever is on the water,” Stokes said. “But we made some silly mistakes that cost us points, and we need to avoid them at nationals if we’re going to be competitive.”

Yale won the tournament with a combined 89 points, 43 of them coming from the A-team that finished second overall. Roger Williams was the top school in the A division, beating out the Bulldogs by two points. But it was its B-team that didn’t fare as well, finishing with 57 points that moved the Hawks down to third place.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland was right behind Yale in second place overall. The Seahawks finished above the Crimson in the A division with 53 points, while its B-team delivered some clutch performances, tallying 38 points for first place in the division.

Palmer and Wareham only had a couple of races where they finished out of the top six, demonstrating consistency for most of the weekend. The duo started off the championship with a third-place finish but hit a slump early on, falling down to ninth place in the third race. They were able to bounce back, coming up with first place in the sixth race and two more consecutive ones in the eighth and ninth races. The team, however, could not keep momentum going into the final race, coming in eighth.

“Alan and Meghan sailed great,” Stokes said. “I would imagine they would say that they also need to avoid the little mistakes, but I think they had a great weekend the results agree. We’re just happy to have qualified for nationals.”

Bock and Konstadt alternated crew duties for the B-team, which started out very strong, but had two races where it came in the bottom half of the 18-team field. The first race resulted in fourth place, while the team improved to second place in the second trial.

“I think we were kind of in a groove,”  Konstadt said. “A lot of it is psychological and mental, and there was definitely momentum on our side. We were really in touch with the shifts, and we got the pattern really well. We were overall pretty fast.”

The team started falling behind a bit until the seventh race, when it posted two consecutive first-place finishes and came in the third spot in the penultimate race.

The team could have fared a bit better had it not come in 15th place in the final heat.

“Take the last race as an example [of a series of silly mistakes],” Stokes said. “We were in the top-five, and then we had to take two penalty turns. Mistakes of that sort are little mental errors that are equivalent to false starts in football. We just can’t have that.”

The top-nine teams earned a berth to the national championship that will take place next month.

The tournament will take place on June 1-3 at Wisconsin.

—Staff writer Brian A. Campos can be reached at bcampos@fas.harvard.edu.