It didn't go exactly according to plan, but the sailing team closed out the fall season with a strong 10th-place finish in spite of a wave of poor weather and elite competition at this past weekend's Atlantic Coast Championship.
With 197 points over 20 races between the A and B division boats combined, the Jumbos finished in the middle of one of the most competitive fleets they've faced all season.
On Saturday, the sailors were met with a substantial amount of rain and minimal-to-moderate breezes, which led to some very close racing. In the A division, seniors Tomas Hornos and Rachael Brill performed like the veteran duo they are, scoring 88 points in the weekend's 10 races and coming in the top 10 in eight of them. In the B division, senior tri-captains Andrew Criezis and Jennifer Watkins showed flashes of their ability to dominate, earning a first- and second-place finish, but ultimately brought in 109 points due to inconsistency.
In one five-race span in the middle of the day, Criezis and Watkins went from a 16th-place finish, to a second, to a 16th, to a first, to a 16th. Such fluctuation was detrimental to the duo's impressive overall efforts.
"We had some really good races with a first and a second, but we also had some really bad ones at the opposite end of the fleet," Criezis said. "We did do a good job managing the fleet when we were ahead and being aggressive downwind when we were behind.
"I had a hard time reading the persistent left shifts in the morning on Saturday, which was unusual for the Charles River," he continued. "It's usually very shifty back and forth, but it was surprisingly steady, which was against prior experiences. Aside from that, just a few minor errors happened, such as our timing on our tacks was a bit off."
In a sport in which one's success depends on one's ability to predict and act on wind shifts, not being able to see anything can certainly compromise one's ability to perform.
"Conditions did affect our performance in certain ways," Brill said. "At times during the day, the driving rain made it difficult to read the wind on the water and predict where the next shift would come from. There was even a point when neither Tomas nor I could really even see upwind."
Despite the few errors, though, the 10th-place finish was still commendable given difficult conditions and the fact that the Atlantic Coast is home to the best sailing schools in the nation — of the 18 teams in attendance, 15 of them are ranked in the top 20 in the country, including Tufts at No. 12. To say the competition was stiff would be an understatement, especially considering that the field was peppered with numerous world champions and Olympians, including Hornos, who won the Snipe World Championship in Portugal in the late summer of 2007.
"The competition was realistically the best in the country, but poor starts and not-top boat speed prevented us from doing better," Hornos said.
"Tenth is kind of what you would expect of us just looking at our past records," Criezis added. "Realistically, fifth would have been our goal. The competition was really good. It was the Atlantic Coast Championships and to be honest, the regatta was more competitive than nationals."
After ending Saturday in 10th, the Jumbos were looking forward to their shot at climbing up the leaderboard on Sunday. However, due to a lack of wind, no racing occurred.
"We might have been able to move up if we had sailed on Sunday, assuming we were caught [on] the right side of the shifts," Hornos said.
"I think we would have moved up on Sunday," Criezis added. "I really wanted to charge it and finish strong for the season."
Although waiting by the side of the Charles River on Sunday in hopes of the breeze to filling in was an anticlimactic finish to Jumbos' fall season, the quest for a national championship in the spring is just beginning, and the level of excitement couldn't be higher.
"We had our ups and downs this season," Brill said. "We had highlights at many regattas but fell short at others where we were hoping to do a little bit better. I am excited to see how the team will do in the spring, though, considering how hard we are all planning to workout this winter and raise the commitment level up a notch."
Though sailing itself can be extremely nuanced, the main issue the Jumbos have to address heading into the spring is rather simple: remaining steady and consistent.
"We are a solid team that needs to avoid deep races and get a few more top threes," Hornos said. "If we can do that in the spring, things will start going our way."
