Fishwagons Compete in Mass State Championships

It was a hot Wednesday afternoon on May 23 in Boston when the sailing team descended on the Charles River to defend their Massachusetts State Championship title. The entire team traveled to the MIT Sailing Pavilion to race against 20 other public and private schools from Massachusetts. In the past, the sailing team has won six state titles (most recently last year) and has never placed lower than fifth. However, unlike previous years, the regatta was altered by MIT; instead of having two days to race, this year’s regatta was comprised of eight races in one day.  For the state championship, the regatta was a fleet race with each boat competing against one another for the top spot in the race.  Each school got one boat per fleet, and there were two fleets: A and B.  There was also another change to this regatta, the teams sailed Fireflies instead of the 420s which they were accustomed to. The upperclassman had the opportunity to try out the boats the day prior to racing to better acquaint themselves with handling Fireflies.

For the state championships, five sailors competed. They were: for A Fleet, skipper Hannah Lynn and crew Margo Blagdon and for B Fleet there were skippers Renee Torrie and Peter Lynn with crew Emily Mills.  Hannah and Margo sailed the four races for A fleet while Renee sailed the first two races with Emily for B fleet and Peter sailed the final two races with Emily.  Since Fireflies are very light boats, the teams needed to be careful when tacking to make sure that they did not capsize the boat! Teams also had to balance their weight accordingly, making sure that the boat did not get too far off balance.

The Massachusetts High School Sailing State Championship is the last regatta that Marblehead attends for the year, and for seniors it is their last high school regatta.  So at the end of the regatta, after four years of high school sailing, seniors Margo Blagdon, Dylan Mace and captains Nick LaChance and Ryan Hoey culminated their high school sailing career with a fifth place finish at the Mass State Championship for 2012.  

We wish all the seniors good luck in the future: sail hard, sail fast.