This past weekend, Jack Swikart, Patricia Andrade, Cary Kane, Drew Gallagher, Keen Butcher and I traveled to Kings Point for our first big intersectional regatta of the season. Because the Nevins Trophy is a three division regatta, we were sailing all 3 of Kings Point’s fleets at the same time. While Jack and I started out in A Division FJs, Drew and Pati sailed the 420s in B Division, and Keen took charge of the C Division Lasers. The breeze was solid right off the bat, but cycling all morning, and Jack made the switch to Cary after the first race, only to switch me back in after another three races. Drew and Pati posted some solid races in the medium breeze, including a bullet right before the lunch break, and Keen was consistent all day.  After lunch the breeze picked up considerably, leading to a tough afternoon for everyone, especially without our heavier crews for the big breeze. After fighting through gusts of about 20 for most of the afternoon races, we finished the day in 11th place overall.  After a great diner dinner, we headed to bed ready for the next day.

Sunday morning we awoke to humidity and no breeze, conditions that didn’t change once we got to King’s Point. After a bit of a wind delay on shore, we finally got out with the hopes of starting the first race around 11:00, but we floated around for another 45 minutes before the A division sequence started (in which time I learned how to sail a Laser and Keen learned how to crew). The bit of breeze held just long enough for each division to get one more race off. We all posted pretty solid midfleet finishes before the fleet started sailing back towards the docks. We officially went into onshore postponement shortly thereafter, and then to the end of the regatta about an hour later- a typical Kings Point Sunday. We ended the weekend in 11th place out of 20 very competitive teams – a great start for our season. On the whole, we had a great weekend and showed a lot of promise for the coming season, definitely learning a lot about what work we have ahead of us for this fall.

Many thanks to the Gallagher family for hosting us this weekend!

Catie Hopkins ’17

Click here for the scores: http://scores.collegesailing.org/f14/nevins/