“Two is the rabbit, everyone. Port tack!” Head Coach ike Callahan (SFS ’97) shouts to his team of two dozen sailors at practice last Tuesday on the Potomac.

The wind is light and the roar of jets landing at Reagan National interrupts Callahan every 90 seconds, but the imperfect Washington Marina is where Hoya sailing practices and develops its national championship talent.

With their new fleet of 18 Flying Junior dinghies – knows as FJs – rigged and ready to sail, Georgetown has just begun fall practice.

But just because the practice season starts does not mean full-fledged sailing is underway. With weather reports predicting eight knots of wind, junior Brooke Crawford thought she would be in for an exciting practice.

“I just checked weather.com and it said eight knots,” she says, “I was so excited for sailing practice.”

When the team arrives at the marina, the most noticeable wind is coming from the jets landing at the adjacent airport.

“Today wasn’t the best day for sailing,” Callahan says after practice. “But we’re out here practicing because somewhere at the College of Charleston or Harvard, they’re practicing in good conditions.”

The sailors begin practice with a drill, circling a buoy Crawford has tossed into the water from Callahan’s motorboat. Crawford has the day off from practice and because of the light winds and freshman tryouts, practice will not be very intense.

“The point of this drill is for everyone to practice their roll tacks,” Callahan explains as the boats make a 20-foot circle around the red buoy. “It gets pretty boring after a while.”

Each crew of two sailors is responsible for rigging its own boat and getting out to the circle drill as quickly as possible. But at every practice there is someone who takes longer to rig his boat, Crawford says, forcing everyone to roll tack, roll tack and roll tack until the slowest boat is out on the water.

A roll tack is used to gain speed in light wind: The skipper and crew tilt the boat hard to one side and quickly right it.

After the warm-up, the team begins drills. Much effort is spent lining each boat up at an imaginary starting line, waiting for one puff of wind to let practice proceed. Until then, sailors catch some rays or splash each other with bailers.

“This can be a pretty laid back sport,” Callahan says. “But come out here when the wind’s at 20 knots and then you really see, wow, this is an athletic activity. It’s exciting to watch.”

But the wind is barely tipping four knots and the boats are not moving.

“It’s like if at basketball practice the hoop just disappears at times,” he says. “When you get that hoop, you’re going to take as many shots as you can on it because you may not get it back for a while.”

The wind picks up and a jet-aided puff of breeze sets off practice again.

“Alright, two is the rabbit, port tack!”

And with a tweet of his whistle, Callahan sets two dozen sailors into motion. At first there is a clump of boats, all moving in unison, tacking on Callahan’s whistle but some boats separate themselves from the rest. They may not be the best boats, however.

“It’s tough in this kind of wind to see who’s really doing a good job,” Callahan says. “At this point it’s really luck where you are on the line and where the wind gusts.”

Nevertheless, the team presses on, forcing three tacks in the sub-par wind as the landing planes complicate the situation.

Not only does the roar of engines disrupt communication at regular intervals, but the swirling jet wash creates mini-water spouts across the Potomac.

“You’ll see one or two,” Callahan explains to freshmen trying out for the team. “They look cool but don’t sail into them unless you want to get knocked out of your boat.”

Most of the freshmen Callahan is speaking to have never sailed before.

The team expects five or six walk-ons this year, a higher number than average.

“We’ll take kids that have never sailed before,” Callahan says. “If they’re athletic and want to learn, they’ll be able to learn.”

When asked how a novice could learn to sail a dinghy at the collegiate level with no prior experience, a handful of sailors point out the simplicity of the boat’s design and the ease with which it can be steered.

Callahan translates and explains that the smaller jib sail in front is easier for the crew to let in and out than the ones on other, larger 420 boats. Unlike other types of sailing, which require trapezeing (providing extra stability by hanging out of the boat on a harness attached to the mast), dinghy sailing is relatively simple.

“First we teach them what to do,” Callahan says, “after they’ve learned to do things, then we start teaching them the why to do certain things.”

Callahan may take five novices but he expects the most out of the six recruits he’s wooed with Georgetown’s name and sailing pedigree.

“There are no scholarships in college sailing,” he says, “so you get the kids that really want to come to Georgetown.”

And the talented sailors he has flourish despite the light air of the Potomac. One needs only look at returning senior all-Americans Blaire Herron and Chris Behm and junior Carly Chamberlain as well as up-and-coming-sophomore Marco Teixidor of Puerto Rico.

“That’s kind of our badge or honor,” Callahan says. “We practice in bad wind all the time and we go out and beat all these teams that are practicing in much better conditions than we have.”

Callahan cannot predict how well the team will perform this season because he’s no meteorologist.

“The year we won the national championship, 2006, we had maybe a couple of days like this [with light air],” Callahan says. “But if we get stuck with ten days like this in the fall, we’re going to get behind in where we need to be.”

For everyone wondering how well this year’s crop of sailors will finish the season, the answer can be found blowing in the wind.