UC Irvine Club Sailing Team

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!!