This past weekend five of the Mama Bears plus Drake traveled all the way from Berkeley to Charleston, South Carolina to compete in the Charleston Spring Coed Interconference regatta in order to scope out some of the competition on the east coast and begin prepping for our nationals qualifiers later in the season. Hosted by the College of Charleston, the regatta was a fun, yet very challenging event. After focusing on team racing for much of the season, the team found itself having to switch modes into a fleeting racing mindset, as well as navigate the light, choppy, and insane current conditions at the venue.

The first day A fleet sailed in Z420s and B fleet in FJs. The conditions were very light and the current was ripping out of the river opening all day, making mark roundings and starts far more difficult to maneuver than usual. Eight races were run, and while both A and B teams were able to stay competitive with the other schools present, our scores were not as high as we would have liked them to be.

The second day, both fleets switched boats. While conditions were light in the morning and we were able to sail in a more sheltered region of the river, in the afternoon after lunch the wind picked up significantly well into the lower to mid teens. The flow out of the river was also much stronger, and many general recalls were called, the whole fleet essentially found itself setting up for the starts many boat lengths below the starting line in order to not be over, and many boats were being pushed far past the upwind mark lay lines. During this time, our skippers and crews shuffled around several times in order to get everyone on the water and learn something from the different ways in which we handled the conditions and competitors.

Overall, while the sailing team did not perform as well as we would have liked, this regatta revealed the weaknesses we needed to focus on going into our Coed and Women’s PCC National Qualifiers, and gave us a taste of the competition we would be coming up again in Nationals. We hope to return to the Charleston interconference event again in the future!