Sperry Top-Sider Women's Semifinals

Teams arrived to cloudy skies, 77 degrees and a light rain this morning at Austin Yacht Club. Winds were from the south-southeast at about nine knots. As the day progressed the skies cleared to reveal sunshine on and off and temperatures soared to the high 80s and low 90s with south-southeast winds staying around 10 knots.

Eager sailors in A-division crossed the starting line before the gun in the first race, causing the race committee to hail a general recall. The second start was a success and racing was underway around 10:30 a.m. Teams are sailing in Club FJ’s on a windward/leeward course 4 laps around. A-division completed eight races today while B-division completed six.

There were a couple more general recalls in the beginning of the day as it was a priority to sail to the right side of the course where the wind and shifts were better making a good start at the pin difficult.

“The conditions today were very nice and the breeze stayed pretty steady, 11 to 12 knots with not too much chop,” Mike O’Connor, head coach of Harvard University says. O’Connor says the shifts were pretty visible on the course and nothing like the dramatic shifts they are used to seeing where they sail on the Charles River. Sailing for Harvard was Emily Lambert ’12 and Isabel Ruane ’14 in A-division and Morgan Russom ’14 and Alexandra Jumper ’12 in B-division.

Harvard is happy to be sitting in fourth place after the first day of racing, a qualifying position, but O’Connor says they hope to move up in the standings tomorrow. After a couple of difficult starts and a few missteps on the course in the middle of the day, the Harvard sailors were able to shake it off and come back with better finishes, O’Connor says. They learned from their mistakes and are ready to come back stronger tomorrow.

The scores are close with the top two teams, the College of Charleston and Connecticut College, only one point apart, 70 and 71 points respectively. The University of Rhode Island and Harvard are tied with 89 points, "however, Harvard loses the tiebreaker. Dartmouth College is only two points behind Rhode Island and Harvard with 91 points in fifth place.

The sailors arrived to temperatures in the 80s, partly cloudy skies and a light 5-knot breeze from an easterly direction. The first race of the day was the seventh race in B-division in the Semi-Finals series around 9:30 a.m. CDT.

Four races were completed this morning in the Semi-Finals series, one in A-division and three in B-division. The first race started in light breeze and was won by the University of Rhode Island, who are defending champions of the Gerald C. Miller Trophy. They were followed by Connecticut College and Washington College. In the second race, 8B, the boat side of the line was heavily favored and there were four general recalls before getting underway.

When A-division took to the water the breeze built to 8-10 knots with 12-knot gusts. More shifts were seen across the course making it important for the sailors to get into the correct groove and hit the shifts accordingly. As a storm cell approached for the last two races of the Semis series the wind continued to build to a steady 15 knots and then up to 25-30 knots from the northeast. About a dozen capsizes littered the fleet as everyone worked hard to finish the last race.

The nine teams that qualified from the Semi-Finals series, listed in order, include: Connecticut College, College of Charleston, Brown University, University of Rhode Island, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Hawaii, St. Mary’s College of Maryland and Eckerd College. There was a 65-point spread between first and ninth place. St. Mary’s and Eckerd, the final teams to qualify, tied for eighth place.