Richmond Hill Sailors have had a successful fall season this year.
This season has been a rebuilding one for the team in B division after graduating Austin Schneider last season. There are several sailors that are stepping it up and working hard at skippering B division.
The season began with a Charleston regatta on Sept. 14. The team posted a fifth-place finish overall with a first-place finish in A division and a 10th-place finish in B division.
Sailing for the team in A division was Dana Rohde skippering with Livia Chapman as crew. It’s notable that Chapman was a new member last season and really has worked hard and stepped in to a lead position at this season’s opener.
Rohde won A division posting only 14 points over six races holding off Wando’s Carter Cameron who posted 17 points. Kayla Edwards and Ashley Pentecost shared the skippering duties in B division. Pentecost wasn’t skippering she was crewing. Also sailing was new heavy air crew Brendan Jarboe.
In all, B division posted 59 points and finished in 10th place only one point out of ninth place and six points out of seventh place.
Richmond Hill also sailed a JV team at the event that included Conner Mcarthy (skipper) and Cecelia Giangacomo(crew) in A divison and Billy Winters(skipper) and Misseal Baes-Velez(crew), Sanders Stephens (crew), and Michael Lane (crew) in B division.
On Oct. 5 the team traveled to Brunswick to compete.
With many seniors taking SATs, there where many team members that had to step up. The team finished in third place overall.
A division finished in fifth place with McCarthy sailing the first four races and Rohde — returning after SATs — sailing the final four races.
McCarthy stepped it up and kept us in the game with crew Chapman. Rohde pulled the team up from fifth place to third place with a 1,3,5,1, in the final A division races. Edwards skippered B division along with crews Winters and Giangacomo. B division improved from their 10th-place finish in the first regatta to a sixth-place finish in Brunswick.
The team then took the annual trip to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy High School Invitational Regatta.
This event allows the team to compete against competitive sailors from the Northeast. The team finished in 13th place out of the competitive 22-boat fleet. Sailing for the team in A division was Rohde as skipper with Chapman crewing in 12 of the 14 races and McCarthy crewing in the remaining two.
B division skippers were Edwards and Winters with Erin Rowlings, Edwards and Winters sharing the crewing duties. What was notable at this event was Richmond Hill’s A division finished in second place, only four points out of first.
The team’s most recent success was Nov. 16 at its home regatta in Sunbury. Fifteen teams converged Saturday morning and were greeted by a dense fog and little breeze.
The 9:45 a.m. scheduled first race was postponed due to the lack of wind and racing did not begin until 11:30 a.m. Six races were completed in each division before racing ended at 4:30 p.m.
The team finished in third place overall. Richmond Hill won A division for the second time this season posting a 1,4,3,1,1,2.
A division was sailed by Rohde and Chapman. Richmond Hill’s B division finished in fourth place and was sailed by Edwards and Pentecost. These sailors came on strong the second half of the regatta posting a 3,1,4 and narrowly missed placing in the top three by only four points.
Also sailing well on a combined JV team was Winters as skipper and Giangacomo as crew.
The team thanks all those who made the home regatta a success.
Richmond Hill Sailing is well on the way to qualifying to sail in the Gold Regatta at the beginning of March and hopes to once again qualify to sail in the district championships which the team is hosting in Sunbury on March 29-30.