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Andersen & Hawks finish 7th in Co-ed Dinghy Championship!

Alec Andersen helped his "A" team to a 7th placed finish at the Gill Co-Ed National Dinghy Championships on Friday, May 31, 2013. Photo credit: supplied
ROAD TOWN, Tortola, VI - The Roger Williams University Sailing team fished 7th at the Gill Coed Championship which concluded on Friday, May 31, 2013 in St Petersburg, Florida.

The Hawks “A” division teams of Alec Anderson (Tortola, BVI) and Abby Preston (Newport, R.I.), Alyssa Siefert (Duxbury, Mass.), Jake Bartlein (Santa Barbara, Calif.), and Henry Vogel (Jamestown, R.I.) finished the competition with 132 points good for the fourth spot in their respective division. The B Division team of Tyler Macdonald (Newport Beach, Calif.), Alexander Rudkin (Middletown, R.I.), Bianca Rom (Amityville, N.Y. ), Connor Corgard (Coon Rapids, Minn.), and Vogel put a 177 points on the board to take the 10th spot. The combined total 309 was 4 points ahead of Yale and 8 points behind Stanford.

After the second day of the ICSA/Gill Coed Dinghy National Championship, the Roger Williams University Sailing team improved one spot from the previous day, moving up to seventh place in the competition.

The top 18 college sailing teams in the nation gathered on Tampa Bay in St. Petersburg, Fla. after qualifying in a semi-final championship held at Hampton University in April. The National Championships are co-hosted by the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Eckerd College and the St. Petersburg Yacht Club.

Teams arrived to great winds Wednesday morning and racing got underway at 9:45 a.m. Temperatures were in the 80s and Easterly winds built to around 17 knots with higher gusts in the afternoon. The breeze also brought wavy conditions making a lot of the racing about boat speed. A lot of teams changed up their pairings to get more weight in the boat to handle the bigger breeze.

The race committee was able to run a lot of races quickly due to the strong winds. It was a long day for the competitors with few breaks, but the racing stayed competitive. The University of Florida, St. Petersburg and Eckerd College volunteers have been running a quality event and have used good judgment with the sailing on and off the water.

The Hawks had a rough showing in the first race, with A Division placing 15th and B Division coming in 10th. However, the team was able to bounce back quickly, with A Division rolling off three straight top-five races. After a small 14th-place setback in the following race, A Division came back with a win, followed back top-seven finishes in two of the last three races.

B Division fared well, grabbing top-nine positions in three of the next four races after the opener, including a third-place result in the fifth race of the day. The division would then end the day with a seventh place race and a pair of 10th place finishes in the final three races.

Alec Anderson (Tortola, BVI), Alyssa Seifert (Duxbury, Mass.), Abby Preston (Newport, R.I.), and Jake Bartlein (Santa Barbara, Calif.) raced at A Division for RWU. Tyler Macdonald (Newport Beach, Calif.), Alexander Rudkin (Middletown, R.I.), Bianca Rom (Amityville, N.Y.), and Connor Corgard (Coon Rapids, Minn.) sailed at B Division.

College of Charleston managed to hold onto their lead, sailing consistently in the top of the fleet. Sixteen points behind them in second place is Georgetown University who moved up from fourth place. Brown University is another 16 points behind Georgetown in third place having moved up from ninth place.

Tuesday was the first day of the ICSA/Gill Coed National Championship, co-hosted by the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Eckerd College and the St. Petersburg Yacht Club, and the Roger Williams University Sailing finds itself in eighth place after the opening races of competition.

The top eighteen collegiate sailing teams in the nation reported to the regatta venue on Tampa Bay in St. Petersburg, Fla. to compete for the Henry A. Morss Memorial Trophy, awarded to the winning team. The trophy was donated by a group of nationally known yachtsmen as a memorial to Henry A. Morss, a Boston yachtsman and 1907 Bermuda Race winner, as well as a Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumnus and benefactor.

Racing got underway around 11 a.m. There was a steady Northeasterly breeze around 8 knots to start the day. Temperatures were warm in the 80s. In the morning the competitors had an opportunity to practice in the boats, Club Flying Juniors (CFJs), before racing got underway. They are sailing on a trapezoid course.

Teams were eager to get going and it showed when the first start of the day was a general recall. The racing got underway after the next start in good dynamic conditions including large, but short puffs and shifty conditions. The puffs made for tricky racing and allowed boats to have big gains or losses on the beats. The left side of the course was also along the shoreline making its own influence on the breeze on the course.

Around lunch time the breeze lighten up to around 5-6 knots. It started to rain on and off creating a lot of holes on the course where the winds got light and shifty. The race committee was able to get off five races in both divisions, but had to call off the sixth A-division race due to a big wind shift. They postponed the racing on the water, but the winds did not settle down and recover to continue the racing. Racing was called around 3:30 p.m.

The Hawks opened up the regatta with a sixth-place finish in the opening race at A Division, while B Division took ninth in their race. RWU began tied for seventh before A Division placed 11th, 9th, and 3rd in their next three races. They would close out racing with a 12th place finish in the final race of the day. B Division hovered around the middle of the pack, going 9th, 11th, and 10th before nabbing a sixth-place finish in the last race. The Hawks were tied with Brown University with 86 points, but a head-to-head tie breaker gave the Bears the official seventh-place slot.

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