Nickerson Trophy

Saturday saw very little wind but enough to get the speedy Larks around the course for two fair races in “A” division. Two attempts in “B” were not so fair and were abandoned. While waiting for wind the entire group was treated to a talk by Allison Jolly (USF coach) about how she and Lynne Jewell Shore (BU’82) won the first women’s gold medal in sailing at the 1988 Olympic Games in Korea in epic survival conditions. She even had a video about the sailing Games from that year. It was a beautiful warm and sunny fall day.

Sunday was far different. A cold and cloudy Northerly blew a steady eleven knots down the lake. “B” and then “A” sailed giant modified starboard triangles for their first sets. Clearly reaching is a lost art as many figured out what to do as they went along. Some boats went high to attack or defend while other boats snuck along the shoreline down low. There was some confusion at every mark as well. There were a number of fouls and almost as many penalty turns. One team always did their penalty turns and that was Coast Guard. Though it didn’t help their score they learned more from their mistakes and should be commended for such good sportsmanship. Unfortunately eleven knots is not quite enough to plane a Lark on a broad reach so the course switched back to “4’s” with offset and gates. Rotation went really fast with the start finish right off the dock. There were some really great sailors from BC, Harvard, Dartmouth and elsewhere but Tufts managed a win with a simple formula; start away from the other boats and go fast. Other teams were inconsistent due to traffic problems at the start.

This was the first home regatta in the new Bacow Sailing Pavilion, named for former MIT sailor and Tufts president (and first lady) Lawrence and Adele Bacow. The Nickerson family came Sunday with gourmet soup, other treats and the Nickerson Trophy in hand with Lawrence Bacow’s name engraved under the winning MIT team from 1970. Dan Nickerson, a Tufts junior was also there to coach the Jumbo freshmen with a perfect view of the race course from the upper observation deck.

Many thanks to the scorekeeper’s Maggie Bacon’14 on Saturday and Pierre du Pont’16 on Sunday. Thank you to the Bacows and all the donors for bringing this really special sailing pavilion on Upper Mystic Lake into the world.

Ken Legler, PRO

The following chart shows the relative rank of the teams as of the race indicated. Note that the races are ordered by number, then division, which may not represent the order in which the races were actually sailed.

The first place team as of a given race will always be at the top of the chart. The spacing from one team to the next shows relative gains/losses made from one race to the next. You may hover over the data points to display the total score as of that race.