The Georgetown women’s sailing team competed in the Jen Harris Women’s Showcase Finals over homecoming weekend Oct. 12 and 13 and finished 10th in a field of 18 boats. The regatta was hosted by Navy in the Severn River.
Georgetown finished the day in the middle of the pack and stayed there throughout Sunday to finish in 10th place. Sunday, however, brought much less appealing conditions for the races. A light and shifty easterly wind failed to be strong enough to fulfill a full day of racing, and the regatta was stopped prematurely. Brown University came in first place with 114 total points. Yale came in second with 126, and Harvard in third at 135. Georgetown finished with a total of 184, putting the team in 10th place for the weekend.
An 8-12 knot southeasterly wind filled sails all afternoon, resulting in a significantly lower degree of difficulty on the course than the team had expected.
This course was familiar for the Hoyas, as Georgetown races at events hosted by Navy most years, though they generally are qualifiers or the actual competition for the Laser South and Navy Women’s Open.
The Hoyas raced two boats in the regatta. The first was skippered by senior Gwynie Dunlevy and crewed by junior Marley Mais for the first six races. For the last four races, the first boat changed personnel, and sophomore Riley Kloc became skipper while Dunlevy moved to crew. This boat came in 14th in the first division. Georgetown was the only school in the first division to change its racers between the races of that division this weekend. Stanford, however, did make a change in the second division, competing against different opponents but still recording a good enough score to compete with the event’s elite teams.
The second Georgetown boat was skippered by junior Carly Broussard and crewed by sophomore Victoria Boatwright. Broussard and Boatwright claimed fifth in their division.
Racing kicked off Saturday to unexpectedly pleasant conditions, with the wind being stronger than the forecast had indicated, to go with reasonable temperatures and no precipitation. The Inter-collegiate Sailing Association’s writeup of the event noted the teams’ good fortune in the face of a forecast that promised a substantial amount of rain. “The forecast has never been more wrong in a favorable way,” the ICSA said.
While this may not be the result that the Hoyas were hoping for, they have a shot at redemption in two weeks at the MAISA Women’s Championships in St. Mary’s City, Md. The coed team, on the other hand, has a regatta this upcoming weekend. They will race at the Coed Showcase Finals hosted by Connecticut College on Oct. 19 and 20.
