A College Sailor's Life: A Win at ACC’s to Finish my Senior Fall

By: Kelly Stannard

This weekend marked the conclusion of the fall dinghy season in college sailing. Three of the biggest fall fleet races were on the line at the Pacific Coast Championship (PCC), the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championship (WACC), and the Atlantic Coast Championship (ACC).

At the PCC’s, the schools on the west coast battled it out and Stanford came out on top with Cal. Santa Barbra second and Southern Cal placing third.

The WAA’s hosted by New York Maritime had some extremely tight racing and it came down to a tie breaker between the University of Rhode Island and Yale. Yale won the tie-breaker to win the event. In third place and only one point behind the top two was Dartmouth.

The ACC’s were hosted by Harvard, where I was competing this weekend for Roger Williams University. And yes, the Hawk’s won! I couldn’t think of a better way to finish off my senior year fall season. All of my teammates sailed extremely well this weekend and our Coach, Colin Merrick insisted that we, “Stay focused ALL weekend”. This motto seemed to work out well for us and we were able to stay as consistent as we could on the shifty Charles River winning overall by 43 points. Sailing A division was Sean Bouchard, our “heavy” Jake Bartlein, and me. We finished 6th. Our B division really kept us in the running all weekend. They won their division by 20 points. Sailing in B was, Alec Anderson, Sophie Bellacosa and Tyler Wilson.
Dartmouth finished second and Brown finished up second and third.

It was a beautiful weekend with warmer than anticipated weather, even though I still wore my drysuit and a neckwarmer both days! The season is over. Time to roll up my drysuit, hang up my boots, pack away the bailer and get some homework done before the spring season comes around.