University of Oregon Sailing

Hey all! It’s a new year and we have already started practices up again! Just in case you forgot, practices are still on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3 til dark. We meet outside of the Club Sports office in the EMU building.

We have no requirements to come out for the team, so all you have to do is show up! Shoot us an email so we can make sure that there will be someone there to meet you.

We look forward to seeing lots of new faces this year. Sail Fast,

The UO Sailing Team.

Thursday May 26th, 2011

The University of Oregon Sailing Team made the trip up to Cascade Locks for Team Race Nationals. We knew that the following few days were going to be intense to say the least. So we turned in early and prepared for team racing the following day.

Friday May 27th, 2011

We rolled up to the Columbia River Gorge at 9am to watch the first round of team racing. We were in the second group with some of the top competitors at the regatta which included: Boston College, St. Marys, Hobart William Smith, Stanford, Wisconsin, and University of South Florida.  We pumped ourselves up for the day as the first group went out to sail, and then we sat around.

We sat around for a long, long time. It rained, and then poured, and then rained some more. The wind was up and down going from zero to the high teens in a matter of minutes. The current was stronger than anyone had ever experienced. Needless to say, all of these conditions were going to make for interesting team racing. As 2pm approached, the first group came off the water, and we headed out to face USF in the first race.

Which we lost. In fact, we lost all of our races that day. That is not to say that we were shut out. All the races were extremely close, and we forced many teams into sticky situations as they came close to the finish. Every single race we showed some of the top teams in the nation that we were a force to be reckoned with. And every race, we learned valuable information that we put in to action almost immediately. We didn’t qualify for the Gold Round (or the finalists for the regatta), but we were ready for Saturday. It was time to show the country what us ducks were capable of.

Saturday May 28th, 2011

Saturday was a clean slate. It didn’t matter what the outcome was for the day before. The team was ready to bring it our all in the Consolation Round. We faced off against USF for the first race. Again. All of the skills that we gained the day before took affect all at once, and we pulled off a win. It was an awesome moment for the team. We had won because of our skill, not because of luck. It was a testimony to not only how much we had learned and grown at the regatta, but how much we had grown since the beginning of the year. The day continued on in a similar fashion. UO won 3 our of 5 races, and the ones we lost were extremely close.

We placed 3rd in the Consolation Round and 11th overall. Yes, that means 11th in the nation! Fortunately, we are a young team. This regatta has motivated us to try even harder next year, qualify for more national events, and have an even better showing.

This was our final regatta for the year, and it was a great way to end the season for the members of the team that participated in the event. The roster is as listed below:

Skippers:

Andrew Balter
Elliot Drake
Philip Gordon

Crews:

Cara Kuhlman
Kate Emberley
Hyojung Na
Mickey Scott

Special thanks to Hannah Darrow and Mike Karas. Mike has been a great coach and support system for the team throughout this year and his advice has been invaluable to us as a team. As for Hannah, even though she couldn’t sail this past weekend, she kept the team motivated throughout the whole regatta, and everyone truly appreciated it.

Photos of us at Nationals can be found here.

Also check out some footage and an interview on of us on Sailgroove.

After a year of recruiting, training at Fern Ridge, and traveling almost every weekend of the academic year, the 2010-2011 University of Oregon Sailing Team completed one of it’s many goals.

We qualified for the 2011 ICSA Team Race Nationals! If you haven’t already caught on, this is a big deal. We sailed in all of the qualifying events this year including: Singlehand Quals (Men and Women), Match Race Quals, Coed Quals, Women’s Quals, and Team Race Quals.

We won three out of the six sending Elliot Drake to Singlehand Nationals and a coed team to Long Beach for Western Semi-finals to compete against many of the top team across the nation. We didn’t make in the top nine of our fleet, but put up a great fight and placed 13th (2 points out of 12th!) overall.

Team Race Nationals

14 of the countries best teams will be competing in the Columbia River Gorge at Cascade Locks, OR on May 27th-29th, 2011. Our main advantage in this event is our experience sailing at the Gorge. It’s a great venue with a lot of current, heavy wind and (hopefully) sunny conditions. This will make for challenging, but exciting team race conditions.

UO will be in a group with the defending champs, Saint Mary’s, and winners of coed semifinals Boston College. We are nationally ranked for the first time in the teams history.

We will be updating our twitter up to and during the event. Follow us for results and condition information.

In short, this has been an amazing year for the team, and our captains Phil Gordon and Marissa Paulling are greatly impressed with the progress we have made as a group. We will be graduating Marissa and Cara Kuhlman this year. Both of them have made extremely important contributions to the team, for which they cannot be thanked enough.

It’s been a great year for the University of Oregon Sailing Team. We traveled all up and down the West Coast, competed in six qualifying events, and we are heading off to Team Race Nationals at the end of May.

We are working on updating our website, and will hopefully have it done by the end of this week! Keep a lookout for new pictures and information regarding summer sailing and sailing for the 2011-2012 academic year.

Contact information is current if you have any questions.

The University of Oregon Sailing Team website is finished. Not only does it work today but, barring any nuclear apocalypse, it should continue to work with minimal upkeep from the new webmaster. Webmaster you ask, that right, the team is currently looking for someone to stand up to the challenge. The best person for the roll will have an interest in blogging and social networking, the skills you learn will be useful in the future. Tasks include:

• Writing a weekly blog post about the previous regatta or more if you desire.
• Uploading pictures to the PICASA account for viewing on the sailing site.
• Making changes to the contact information as leadership roles change.
• Acting as the website moderator.

Depending on how savvy the new webmaster is they will be able to add to that list as they please. They could even redesign parts of the site as they see fit by adding new pages with more information. Remember, this is a learning experience and after you succeed as webmaster you will have learned:

• eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
• Google Analytics for managing website traffic and sources.
• How to manage a blog
• HTML and CSS (based on desire)

Additionally, you will be giving back to a community of sailors that love what they do. You will be the prime source for new members because most new member will becoming through the website. In becoming the webmaster you will receive an in-depth guide on how to manage the new WordPress website. If you have questions you can always ask the original administration. If you are interested in the position please contact the team leaders and they will get you in touch with me.

In case you didn’t know, the original administration was Taylor Chittick with banners made by Josh McHale. We are both UO Sailing Alumni helping with a desire to do what we love. We made the site to both give back to the team and to polish our skills.

The Gorge 2008

Sail On

UO Sailing is currently Under Construction fear not it will be up and running shortly. In the mean time please contact either Craig Emmes at craigemmes@gmail.com or Sophie Thomas at skthomas09@gmail.com.

In the next few days, and maybe weeks, a lot is going to change here at UO Sailing. For starters all racing, picture, and member information will be available here, instead of through the list serve. We are going to make your inbox small, your needs instant, and your life better. Essentially, we are going to be making a switch of this nature:

*Adds WordPress*

That’s all for now be sure to check back on progress and if you, or anyone you are with, thinks this construction is taking too long feel free to leave a comment. We may or may not listen.