New England Team Race Championship (Fowle Trophy)
Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007
April 28-29 @ MIT (by Harvard) in FJs
Erik Storck/Killarney Loufek, Andrew Loe/Betsy Bryant, Ben Sampson/Kate Hacker
Saturday: Light. Format was designed to follow nationals. Two groups of six teams were created, each would sail a round-robin with the top 4 teams moving on to a round of 8. After the round of 8, initial plans called for another round of 8 and a single final 4, but weather dictated the situation and we did only a double final 4. We sailed decently on Saturday, going 5-0 in our bracket (3-0 going to the round of 8, 2 teams were dropped). We then lost to Yale and finished the day 4-1 in the round of 8 with BC and BU remaining.
Sunday: We rolled up deep in the Sprinter after a Dunkin' Donuts breakfast. First race of the day was against BC. Unfortunately we lost, but were able to rebound and beat BU to secure our place in the final 4. Final 4 was Yale (6-1), BC (6-1), Harvard (5-2) and Dartmouth (5-2). Before going out we had a nice little pep talk that successfully elevated our game. We went 3-0 in the first round of 4 and 3-0 in the second to finish 11-2 making us the New England Champions. Yale (9-4) and Harvard (8-5) also qualified for Nationals. We had a little drama in our second BC race but it ended up not making a difference for either team.
Betsy and I had a very strong weekend. Our boat-handling, especially down-speed tacking, was much improved and we were both quick to recognize developing situations. Its great to win the Fowle Trophy again, we’ll be a top seed going into Nationals and with some practice we plan to be very difficult to beat. For now, we’ll shift our focus to fleet racing.