UC Irvine Club Sailing Team

San Diego presented the anteaters with very pleasant sailing weather this weekend. 70+ degrees and an average of 7knts with occasional legs of necessary hiking--who's complaining?

As usual, the warm weather in SD instigated a mellow vibe. Most people showed up at 10am, despite the NOR report time of 9am. Gotta make time for those Hector's burritos!

On Saturday and Sunday the varsity team broke in the brand new FJ after solving a minor design error (the pistols weren't aligned right). Colin Kincaid and crew Martha Davis sailed in Varsity A fleet while Brian Hoover and crew Chris Huang represented  B division. It took a few races to get into the groove of things on both days, but Varsity picked up speed and continued finishing in top 5 positions as the day went on, plaving 4th overall in both regattas behind Santa Barbara, USC, and Long Beach.

Will Larsen and crew Sam Heller formed the JV A team on Saturday with Nick and crew Sharon Quigly/Austin Moore sailing in B division. On Sunday, Nick and Austin sailed for JV A while Sam switched to skippering with Sharon as his crew.

We all had a fun/relaxing weekend in San Diego and look forward to our next event----next up, the ladies sail in Stanford for the Bryson women's regatta.

A big thanks to the San Diego  team for housing, and to our awesome alumni, Megan Pluth for supplying the anteaters with tasty snacks!

Hey Everyone,

I would like to apologize for not writing these blogs for sooooo long! We have all been really busy and have some GREAT news to share. So, here is what we have been doing for the last few months...

Fall Dinghy PCC's at Santa Barbara:

This was a big regatta for us because it determines "picks" for spring. For all you non-collegiate sailors, picks determine where we can go. Our final score for the event determines what schools get to pick before or after us. If you are first you get your first pick of all the events, last place gets last place. Fall dinghy PCC's determines 3 division, (CFJ, CFJ, Laser) and coed picks.

After two long hot days with little to no wind we ended up 10th out of 21 teams. This was score included our laser results and for picks we scored around 7th in coed 2 division (CFJ only). The waves were slow rollers and some people were feeling sick! This was the last big event of Fall Quarter and showed us that we definetly need to keep working hard if we want to go to nationals again!

Rose Bowl Regatta at Long Beach:

The Rose Bowl Regatta was the first intersectional of our winter quarter. This was a huge event with 29  college teams and 60 high school teams! We sailed off the belomnt pier in Long Beach and faced medium to light winds. We were coming off a long winter break and we held our own. We ended up 15th out of 29 but Sophmore Skipper Colin Kincaid managed to get some top 5 finishes in A fleet against many of those big name sailing schools.

Rainbow Regatta at Hawaii:

Four Anteaters went to Hawaii this past weekend to sail against 13 teams, including a school from Japan, in the Rainbow regatta. Junior, William Larsen Skippered A Fleet with Senior Colin Averill as a crew while Freshmen Nick Weis sailed with our Irish foreign exchange student Sharon Quigley. The Anteaters left on Thursday Night and spent friday getting used to the time change and seeing the sights of Hawaii!

Saturday sharon had a minor medical emergency and could not sail all of Saturday. The Hawaii team let Nick borrow one of their crews so we could sail the event. After the Saturday we ended up right smack in the middle in 7th place. 

For those of you who have never sailed at Sand Island, Hawaii the conditions are extremely tough. It is very shifty in both direction and strength of wind. This makes tactics fairly hard and the local Hawaii sailors had a huge advantage. The wind comes over the island and it can go from 10kts to 3kts in seconds.

Sunday, Sharon Quigley was feeling much better and sailed with Nick. Having someone he had sailed with definitely made a differnece for Nick because he eneded Sunday with a Bullet (1st Place) in B fleet! At the end of Sunday we were still in 7th place overall.

Overall it was a great event and we would like to thank Andy Johnson for letting us stay in his guest house!

Last but definitely not least!

Thanks to Joyce Ibbetson and our Director of Club sports we have a new CFJ! The new CFJ comes with a new set of race sails, new rudder, and tiller, mast, boom, and a new hull! I am very excited about this boat this weekend will be its first time in the water!

Our funding largely depends on donations, and all of YOU helped us by this boat! We had a little bit left over from our fundraiser from last year and that little bit helped us get the boat!

My personal goal is raise enough money for one more boat this year. I would also like to purchase covers for our boats, especially the new ones! A full list of items me would like can be found on the "How to Help" tab at the top of the page!

 Thisyears Sloops PCC’s were hosted by St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.  The Anteaters were represented by BrianHoover at the helm, Colin Kincaid as jib and spinnaker trimmer, and AshleyHobson on the bow.  Afterqualifying two years ago with Brian and Ashley on the team, the ‘eaters weregunning for the win to get another shot at a national title.  However, the switch to a match raceformat instead of the previous fleet race imposed a threat.  The team took the opportunity to getsome match racing experience against other competitive teams a few weeks ago atthe SDYC Invitational match race.

            Saturdayshowed light winds in the morning and a strong current switching halfwaythroughout the day.  After somehomework, napping, and Frisbee games, the race committee took down the AP flagand sent the sailors out around 2pm. The breeze had picked up to 10+ with waves and current as well.  We completed 6 flights the first day,winning all but one race. Highlights included a gybing duel with USC were our crew work excelledand we pulled ahead with every gybe and beating Stanford by half a boat lengthacross the finish line. Race committee kept us out on the water until it wasdark and we ended the day tied for 1st place with Stanford and CalMaritime.

            Sundayconditions were similar, with breeze only picking up after noon.  To complete the round robin, we had tworaces left against UCLA and UH. Our first race against UCLA we missed a key shift and were not able tobeat them.  After the frustratingloss, we pulled together a win against UH and finished the round robin in 3rd.  We then went into a best of 3 serieswith UCLA who ended in 4th. The first race against them we overshot layline due to the switch from aflood tide to an ebb, and they sneaked inside of us at the mark.  The next two races, however, ourtactics and crew work outdid them and the anteaters won both races, putting usin 3rd overall.  In the3rd race, we were even able to push UCLA over the line early tosecure our lead.

            Overall,the anteaters stepped up to the challenge and proved to be a competitive teamwith both crew work and match racing skills.  Big thanks to Michael Whelden for housing, the Hobson’s andHoover’s for food, and the Kincaid’s for a car.

ZOT ZOT!

The lady anteaters took their first trip up north to Stanford Sailing center this past weekend for Women’s Fall Champs. It was a good turnout as far as women’s events go, with 9 teams on the line. Ashley Hobson skippered A with crew Martha Davis, and Kate Andersen skippered B with crew Sharon Quigley. Saturday started out as a hot, windless morning, waiting around until about 1 pm to get off the first set of races, with breeze about 5-8 knots. A fleet sailed 5 races while B sailed 4 races on Saturday, putting us in 3rd place to end the day. Sunday was even worse as far as conditions go, with not a breath of wind all morning and afternoon, A fleet taking some time to float on the water with no success at getting any races off. But B was sent out finally at 3 pm to get one final race off in order to complete the regatta with an even amount of races in both fleets. Stanford ended up taking the win, with USC in 2nd, and UCI ladies stayed in 3rd. It was a good range of competition, with some new skippers on the water as well as some very experienced ones.

Thanks to the Davis and Andersen families for keeping us fed and hydrated this weekend!! This weekend is Sloops Qualifiers at StFYC, so we wish our match racing team good luck!!! ZOT ZOT ZOT.

Last weekend, 9 of us drove to Treasure Island for the annual Stoney Burke regatta. On Saturday, the wind blew pretty strong throughout the day and on Sunday it was pretty light in the morning, but picked up in the afternoon to make a great day of sailing--- and a wet one for Austin who fell in the water after missing his hiking strap, whoops! We had two teams, junior varsity and varsity. Will Larsen, Martha Davis, Kate Anderson, Sharon Quigley, Sam Heller, Austin Moore, and Nick Weis all sailed in junior varsity and did extremely well. They placed third overall, 3 points behind CMA and one point behind UCSB. Brian Hoover and Chris Huang sailed in varsity A both days and Kate Anderson, Sharon Quigley, Will Larsen, Martha Davis, and Sam Heller switched off sailing in varsity B. We placed 11th overall and even though we were hoping to do a little better, everyone learned a lot and shook off the nerves after a long summer. It was a great weekend and everyone had a fantastic time. We are all looking forward to the next regatta!

Thank you to the Huang, Hoover, and Andersen families for housing us during the event, as well as the Andersen and Davis family for bringing lunches on Saturday and Sunday.

This past weekend, our first and second year sailors all headed down to Mission Bay in San Diego for some sunny sailing. Taking on A fleet was a combination of skippering and crewing from Colin Kincaid, Nick Weis, and Sam Heller. In B fleet, Kate Andersen skippered for our new Irish exchange student, Sharon Quigley. With new faces all around, some teams surprised us all with their improvements from previous years, but there were also many novices on the water. CSULB took the win, followed by UCSD and USC, and ASU surprising everyone by taking the 4. We ended up in 5th overall, with a total of 19 teams on the water. Will Larsen and Chris Huang tagged along to help out with the regatta, give us some coaching, and greet us on the dock with freshly barbequed hot dogs. For the first regatta of the year, we all were successful, but definitely room for improvement! It had been a long summer, and now time to get back into race mode! Next up, Stoney Burke at Treasure Island next weekend. Thanks to Matt Nguyen for housing, and to the rest of the UCSD team for running a smooth regatta! ZOT ZOT ZOT.

This past weekend the Anteaters competed in the 2011 ICSA APS Team Race National Championship hosted by the Colombia Gorge Racing Association and the ICSA. The Anteaters were one of two teams to qualify from the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference’s Team Race Championships back in April.

We were placed in the first qualifying group with Georgetown, Yale, Roger Williams, College of Charleston, Northwestern, and Tulane. Most of the team flew into Portland International Airport early Thursday evening. The Lady Anteaters were already in Oregon because in the days leading up to team race nationals they had competed in Women’s Nationals. Alumni and Coach Eric Knopf had also driven his motor-home up from Southern California to help coach both our Women’s and Team Race teams.

Friday was the first day of team racing and the Anteaters faced some tough competition as well as some interesting weather conditions. The conditions were basically the complete opposite of Newport Beach, rainy, windy, and about seven knots of current that was running in the opposite direction of the wind. These conditions made team racing hard for every team in the first few rounds. The first teams we sailed against were, Georgetown, Roger Williams, and Yale. We lost all three rounds which left us in a very bad mood. Coach Eric Knopf managed to raise our spirits and we rallied and went on to beat Northwestern and Tulane. We finished the day sailing against College of Charleston, which ended up being a fairly close race, but in the end we lost. This left us with a 2-4 record and we just missed the cut off for gold fleet, Yale had a 3-3 record and made gold. This put us in the consolation round and meant we only had five more races the following day.

The next day the team came back ready to sail after Coach Knopf inspired us with a very well made speech. The conditions were very different from the day before. The sun had decided to come out and the rain stopped. The wind also became very similar to the bright sunny Newport Beach that the Anteaters were used to. The one condition that stayed consistent was the insane amount of current. We started out the day beating, Tulane and Northwestern, who had also been placed in the consolation round. We then sailed against Oregon who we managed to beat also. The Anteaters next race was against Wisconsin which was a very high tension race because both teams were undefeated up to this point. We ended up taking the loss. Once again Coach Eric Knopf talked to our team and raised our spirits once again. Our final race was against University of South Florida, this was incredibly close and they managed to take the win from us. Although they beat us they did draw a Black Flag from the Judges and an incident went to the room. USF lost the protest that did not affect the final outcome of the race because the USF person that was black flagged was in the six and his teammates had secured the one and two spots. The black flag ended up hurting USF because they had earned an additional black flag that day and the Umpires and Race committee had penalized them by 1.5 wins. This put us second in the consolation round behind Wisconsin. This put us in tenth overall.

This Nationals trip was a great last regatta for seniors, Rex Cameron, Jack Porter, and Blair Johnston. This trip would also not have been possible with the support of our Coach Eric Knopf, who drove his motor home over 1,000 miles so we could use his motor home for the weekend. We would also like to thank UCI Club Sports for supporting us the entire year and to all our Alumni and friends who have donated their time and money to help us. Especially to Eric and Juliana Knopf and Andy Beeckman who came down one weekend and practiced with our team to help us prepare. Our last big thanks is for the Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation who donated to our Nationals Campaign and made our trip possible!

On Sunday the Lady Anteaters flew to Oregon to compete in the Sperry Top Sider/ICSA Womens National Championship. Sophomore Ashley Hobson will be skippering the A fleet with the Junior Martha Davis. . Freshman Kate Andersen will be skippering B fleet with senior Crew Blair Johnston. This terrific team is one of four teams from our conference, PCCSC, to qualify for Nationals. These radiant ladies are a light team and are going to find sailing in the gorge a huge Challenge! They will be racing Monday and Tuesday for nine slots for the National Championship fleet. Alumni Eric Knopf and Juliana Knopf will be coaching them and keeping them humble and happy in their brand new RV van! Results will be posted on the Regatta website located HERE.

Although, they will be the lightweights on the course they will be arriving in style! Our new Pinnies have come just in time for Nationals! Pictures Located Below!

This weekend, your lovely lady anteaters headed up to Santa Barbara to compete in PCCs to qualify for semis, to go to women’s nationals. Although there was only a six boat fleet, we knew the competition would be tough, and only the top three boats would move on to sail in Oregon in May. Checking weather reports all week leading up to the regatta, we saw everything from 15-42 knots predicted in Santa Barbara, with up to seven foot swells, making us question our loyalty to only practicing in calm Newport Bay. Ashley Hobson (skipper) and Martha Davis (crew) were to take on A fleet, while Kate Andersen (skipper) and Blair Johnston (crew) would sail B fleet. Saturday started much calmer than expected, coming in light from a southeasterly direction, shifting and building from the south-west, reaching 22 knots by the afternoon with huge swells, making it seem much windier. It was clear Stanford and Hawaii would take the 1, 2 for the weekend, and it would be us vs. UCSB fighting for the 3, 4, and we weren’t going to give in easily. Both our A and B put on a strong fight all day, averaging with almost all 3s and 4s in each race, putting us in 4th at the end of Saturday with 12 points to make up if we wanted to go to Oregon. We headed home, got some rest, and showed up ready for a fight Sunday morning. Again, it slowly built to a solid 16-20 knots with big rolling swells, perfect for surfing downwind. We were more prepared for the conditions on Sunday after testing the waters on Saturday after not having much practice at all in conditions anywhere near these going into the weekend. Although we didn’t end up catching UCSB Sunday, we continued having solid scores, and all felt proud of our races, and for making it through such tough conditions without any boys on board! Congrats to Stanford for the win and to moving on to nationals, and good luck to Hawaii and UCSB in qualifiers, represent the west coast!! Thanks to the Johnston and Bell’s for housing! Now, time for some team race practice to get ready for Nationals!!! ZOT ZOT ZOT.

This weekend the team headed up to Redwood City to competein the 2011 PCCSC Team Race Championship. After a little bit of luck and someincredible talent, the Anteaters finished second overall gaining a berth toTeam Race Nationals.

Pressure was on this weekend with a total of seven teamscompeting for two spots. The level of competition had significantly improvedsince the McIntyre Team Race event a couple weeks ago. These teams wantedblood; everyone was putting up a fight and definitely gave us a run for ourmoney.

Seeing a wide variety of wind, we were lucky to sail everysingle person we brought up to the event. We had Rex Cameron, with crews, BlairJohnston (L) and Austin Moore (H), Jack Porter with crews, Chris Huang (L) andKate Andersen (H), and Colin Kincaid with crews, Martha Davis (L) and ColinAverill (H). * (L) = light air crews (H) = the people that need to be really well fed before the Gorge. Aftera loud “ZOT ZOT ZOT” cheer on the docks, we definitely set the atmosphere fordomination. We started off our first race with a win against Stanford. No onesaid anything, but we all looked at each other and knew… this was it! We aregoing to take this! The wind picked up in the afternoon from the north to be asolid 15-18 knots.

 A black flag wasdrawn against the University of Hawaii in one of our races resulting in a winfor the Anteaters.  The whole weekend wasexciting with the number of plays, contact drawn (not damaging… but sorry,Stanford) and umpire calls. Not once was our team in a comfortable 1-2 or 1-2-3combination. We all really had to work together to solidify winningcombinations.  The umpires were callingeverything from Rule 42 to more complex issues. We were very grateful that theywere there helping us out.  Overall, theteam was really in tune with minor adjustments on the race course constantlyadapting to the new breeze and keeping the boats moving fast. We completed thefirst day with a total of 6 wins and 3 losses and were tied for second placewith the University of Hawaii.

After racing on Saturday, we had a debrief about some of thecalls the judges made on the water. It was helpful to discuss why they had madecertain calls and what the rules tied to those specific calls were.

Coming into Sunday with a second round robin to finish, theAnteaters knew it was time to turn up the heat. We entered the final four with9 wins and 3 losses. Wind was light in the beginning of the day and picked upto about 8-10 knots as the racing continued. The final four was scheduled to bea single round robin, the four teams were Stanford, UCSB, UH and UCI.  We knew that we had to keep the University ofHawaii at least one win behind us. Our last three races were intense. In oursecond race against UCSB, we rounded the leeward mark in a deep 3,4,5 andconverted it into a 1,3 at the finish. We didn’t give up, we wanted it!  

Special thanks to Stanford University for putting on thisevent as well as to the judges that took time to monitor the event. Thanks toDanielle Richards who took our flustered phone calls and helped us out. Alsobig thanks to the Porter Family, Humphreys Family, Davis Family, AverillFamily, Andersen Family and Huang Family for supporting, housing, feeding andloving us. We greatly appreciate all you do for us! ZOT ZOT!!!  

Team Race Nationals will be held at the Gorge May 27th-29th. 

Also, best of luck to the Lady Anteaters this weekend when they head to PCCSC Qualifiers for Women’s in Santa Barbara!!