Sailing Remains Undefeated Following 3-0 Road Victory Over Bishop Stang

The Nantucket Sailing Team isn’t messing around to begin this season, defeating yet another team to improve to 3-0 in the early part of what they hope is a promising, successful year of sailing. They beat Bishop Stang 3-0 (4-0 if you count an exhibition win), and the Whalers came away feeling good about many aspects of their performance while also acknowledging some things they can improve.

“It was the first time we had seen any chop, but we sailed well, we sailed flat,” head coach Bruce Turner said. “The team saw some new conditions for the season and handled it well.”

Freshman Clementine Kelly said that she felt they were able to do a good job of keeping their boats stable while freshman Sadie Paterson felt like their quick thinking on the water, such as being able to fix things when they needed to be fixed in a timely manner helped them prevail.

“We had a lot of teamwork out on the water today,” junior Archie Ferguson, who is dealing with an injury but still accompanying his team on the water from afar, said. “Our faster boats were watching out for our boats falling behind. Overall, the team really worked together to achieve this 4-0 victory.”

As for where the team could improve, Kelly believes their starts could be better. Senior captain Eli Fuller, who has been tasked with helping a younger team learn the ropes, said that the general awareness on the water could be better when it comes to knowing when to tack (change the direction of the boat), when not to tack, and knowing which side of the course is favored.

Junior Brian Osorio said continuing to become familiar with the rules of sailing is something the group as a whole needs to work on, referencing a particular moment in the regatta where having a better understanding of the basics could have helped them out.

“It seemed our second upwinds let us down today, junior Rory Murray said. “For a team whose strong suit is the second upwind, we didn’t take advantage of it. We had complete control over the race all the way until the second upwind where results became shakier.”

Nantucket's next regatta is on Thursday, April 27 when they host the Monomoy Sharks at 4 p.m.