By Bridget Dolan
The University of Delaware does, in fact, have a sailing team. The club sailing team is headed by Commodore Sophia Caracuzzo and sails on the Chesapeake Bay for practice. The team sails up and down the eastern seaboard in regattas.
Put simply, a regatta is a race — technically, a series of races — but generally a race. The different races of a regatta may be based on skill level or type of boat used. The Delaware sailing team competes in Mid-Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association (MAISA) regattas.
The regattas can last anywhere from one to three days, and some can have up to 18 teams in attendance, each representing their respective schools. Throughout the season, the teams will race when they can, and the National Championships begin on Wednesday, May 21, and continue until May 31.
MAISA regattas, and all Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) regattas, follow the same rules as U.S. sailing — “The Racing Rules of Sailing,” which are published every four years by World Sailing.
Competitive sailing is even an Olympic sport during the Summer Olympics. Sailing has been a part of the Olympics since the first modern Olympics in Athens, Greece, in 1896. Olympic sailing is fleet racing, in which more than two boats sail the course at a time. Match races contrast this, featuring only two boats racing one another.
A standard regatta consists of sailing laps around a series of marks — floating buoys — arranged in a triangle, and the team that finishes in the shortest time wins. Each vessel is required to round the marker on the outer side. Rounding the marker on the wrong side results in penalty. The marks must also be passed in the correct order according to the layout of the course. Other actions that can result in penalties include crossing the starting line early and being within the triangle made by the markers.
The teams are also required to complete the course exclusively using wind power. Fanning the sail (pumping), rocking the boat, sudden forward body movement (ooching) or moving the tiller back and forth to create motion (skulling) are not allowed. Excessive tacks and gibes (changing the side of the boat that the sail is on) are also prohibited.
Some forms of penalties that boats can take include being forced to make one or two extra turns, causing them to fall behind in the race, or scoring penalties, where the team’s final score is docked by 20%.
The teams themselves are required to have two skippers and two crews, and the boats hold two sailors. Skippers are the team leaders and the ones who remain at the tiller and steer the boat.
The Delaware sailing team sails small sloops — boats with two sails — called Flying Juniors. Colloquially, these boats are referred to as Flying J’s. Flying J’s are about 13 feet from bow to stern (front to back) and have a beam (width) of five feet.
Delaware sailing members, courtesy of Blue Hens Recreation and the club sailing team.
The boat is traditionally sailed with two sails flying, the mainsail and the jib, but can have more added. The mainsail is, simply put, the main sail of the boat — it is the sail that is aligned with the mast and boom and is the most recognizable to non-sailors.
The jib, on the other hand, is the sail that lines the edge of the bow and curves towards the stern, stopping around midway along. The jib is the sail that actually provides the power for the boat to pick up speed. Engines on boats are even sometimes referred to as an “iron jenny,” stemming from the slang “jenny” used as another name for a jib. Jenny comes from the original name for a jib, the Genoa.
The jib is classified as a headsail, and is one of two headsails that Flying J’s can fly. The other is a spinnaker, which is a large triangular sail that is flied almost directly off the bow of the boat. A spinnaker pole is used to create an extension off the bow that allows the spinnaker to fly and catch wind. The function of a spinnaker is to pick up speed when sailing downwind.
Downwind is when the wind is coming either directly across the stern of the boat or from any direction past the midway point of the boat. Some sailors, instead of flying a spinnaker, will simply let out their mailsails and jibs to form a 90 degree angle with the boat in order to maximize the amount of wind they catch.
Spinnakers are usually only flown by experienced sailors due to both the difficulty in rigging one and the potential to rip in high winds. Spinnakers can also get tangled in the rigging, and lines (ropes) can get caught around crew members as well, posing a danger to incautious sailors.
The club uses the Flying J’s both for beginners to learn and for experienced racers to race in regattas, but that doesn’t mean that beginner racers aren’t given the opportunity.
The Delaware Spring Open, a regatta hosted by the sailing team, was held on the weekend of April 20 at North East Yacht Club in North East, Md.