School sailing team makes winning waves at regatta

PETER NEEDHAM PHOTO Mackenzie Needham and Rachael Heinze sailing tight with competitors just after roundin the leeward mark.

The Shelter Island School Sailing Team traveled to
Tom’s River, New Jersey last weekend for the
fall District Championship of the Mid-Atlantic Scholastic Sailing
Association. Each of the 18 schools present had to qualify for the
championship at events held earlier in their local leagues.
Shelter Island qualified on October 3 at the Northeast League
Regatta, placing sixth out of the 16 schools that had competed in
that event. Similar competitions were held for the schools in
Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., southern New Jersey and
upstate New York. In all, 69 teams are registered in the MASSA
district, many of which had raced in the qualifiers for a chance to
attend the championship.
Shelter Island had a few firsts at the championship event. Not the
racing kind, mind you, although there were some encouraging
results. The team was shuffled a bit due to a scheduling conflict
with Saturday’s ACT college test, which forced a
change in the teams’ normal makeup.
The first change saw junior Mackenzie Needham step up to skipper
the A-boat. Mackenzie has been the B-boat driver since the Shelter
Island team was formed. The A-boat teams have the top skippers and
crews, so this was a big step up for Mackenzie and teammate Rachael
Heinze.
The next first, and this was a big one, was having Doug Binder take
the helm for the B division. Doug joined the team last year with
little-to-no sailing experience, and here he was, skippering the B
boat for Shelter Island at a championship event!
Doug’s teammate, making his first regatta
appearance, was freshman Mitchell Clark.
When the team arrived Saturday morning to rig the boats at the
Tom’s River Yacht Club the breeze was pretty
fresh. The forecast called for a steadily increasing wind
throughout the day, and it was already blowing 12 knots first
thing. After the skipper’s meeting the A-boats
launched at around 9:30 a.m. with Heinze and Needham on board. They
had a decent start for the windward-leeward course that had been
set and rounded the top mark in about 11th place.
During the downwind run to the next mark a tremendous gust of wind
exceeding 25 knots blasted down the course and immediately blew
three boats over just before the leeward mark. Rachael and
Mackenzie were toppled into the cold water. What a way to start the
day! They immediately righted their boat and despite the rest of
the fleet sailing by them, were able to pass the remaining flipped
boats as those crews struggled to right themselves. They completed
their two races and then sailed in to rotate boats with the B
division.
We had worked out a safe starting strategy for Doug and Mitchell in
the B division. This was an aggressive fleet; the chances of
fouling another boat or getting shut out of the start were too
great to push the line. We decided that a delayed approach at the
committee boat end of the starting line would give the team a
better chance of sailing in clear air. Doug and Mitchell followed
the plan perfectly and were able to sail unimpeded up to the
windward mark.
They were back in the pack, but for first-timers pitted up against
veteran racers they were staying with the fleet respectably. They,
too, succumbed to a mighty puff during one of their races and found
themselves swimming in the river but they righted their boat and
finished the race.
Doug and Mitchell hammered away at the starts. By their sixth race
they were up on the line holding their own with the other boats and
starting with good speed and positioning at the gun. By races 9 and
10 they were in the thick of it, rounding with the fleet at the
marks, fighting it out on the downwind legs and sailing hard
through the tacks to the finish line. They beat boats in several of
their rotations, which is a tremendous accomplishment for
first-time racers.
In the A division Rachael and McKenzie had their hands full. They
were challenged not just by the best high school sailors from the
mid-Atlantic, but also by extremely shifty, windy conditions with
amazing gusts. They did great, however, and surprised us all with
their best of 12 races on Saturday (6th, 7th, 8th and 10th). The
other finishes were in the low- to mid-teens.
After the ACTs on Saturday Connor Needham headed west to help
fortify his teammates. He arrived in time to don his dry suit for
what should have been the last B rotation of the day. Instead the
race committee sent the fleet in at 5:30 p.m. and would conclude
the rest of the rotations the next day. What a long day of
competition!
On Sunday Doug and Mackenzie sailed in the A division, with Connor
and Mitchell taking over in the B fleet. It was still pretty windy
and about 10 degrees cooler but unlike
Saturday’s rainy squalls it was at least
sunny.
Doug and Mackenzie were again right up with the lead pack in their
six remaining races with finishes of 6th, 8th, 11th, 12th, 16th and
17th. Mitchell and Connor found their groove, and with one extra
two-race set, posted finishes of 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 10, 11 and
13.
Overall the team came in 16th, besting the two other schools from
Long Island that had qualified for the regatta. It was a lot of
firsts for the team for reasons other than the race results but
more importantly the size of the team has been expanded in
anticipation of losing the seniors after next spring.