This weekend, the sailing team split up to compete in two events at the University as well as events at Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Boston University and Yale. The team successfully placed in regattas at both Brown and Harvard.
The first of these five competitions was the NEISA Women’s Singlehanded Championship, hosted by the University. At the championship, Katharine Doble ’26 and Kaitlyn Hamilton ’26 placed first and second, respectively. This win qualifies Doble for November’s National Championships at Tulane University.
“Oftentimes in sailing, you can prepare for months and feel completely ready, but then the regatta hits, the wind doesn't go your way,” Hamilton wrote in an email to The Herald. “It feels awesome that our hard work paid off this weekend.”
“It was super cool to see the depth of our team in action,” Hamilton added.
Closely behind Doble and Hamilton was Sidney Moyer ’27, who placed fourth out of the 10 boats in the regatta.
Doble started off the day taking third in her first race and placing first in her second, giving her the lead over the other sailors with four points. Doble’s lead was already insurmountable by the time she took sixth in the last race of the day, allowing her to win the competition with 29 points, the lowest among the group.
Hamilton faced tighter competition, winning second place by only one point. She was one of the more consistent sailors of the day, placing second in five out of her first six races.
“Saturday was a windy north westerly with gusts in the high 20s. Luckily, at home in Fort Lauderdale it is always windy, so I felt prepared,” Hamilton wrote to The Herald. “I was just trying to focus on getting off the line cleanly, keeping the fleet to leeward of me and sailing into the pressure.”
Despite her early consistency, Hamilton had two races where she placed eighth and sixth, risking her overall position. But she managed to hold on to second place by winning the final race of the day.
“My weekend takeaway is that the race is never over and to always keep fighting,” Hamilton wrote.
Moyer and Hamilton are both strong potential candidates for the National Championships, according to Bears Head Coach John Mollicone.
“Assuming they are all going to the National Championship at Tulane, they will have some terrific training together in the ILCA 6 boats” beforehand, Mollicone wrote in a message to The Herald via Brown Athletics. “I know that Katharine Doble wants to improve on her fifth place finish at the Nationals from last year, as does Kaitlyn Hamilton who finished eighth.”
The Bears managed to continue their placement streak in a separate competition last weekend at Harvard, with a second place finish from Emily Mueller ’25, Francesca Edmands ’25, Katherine McNamara ’26 and Brianna Ross ’26 in the competition for the Women’s Regis Trophy.
“I was really pleased with how we managed the tricky conditions on the Charles River this weekend,” Mueller wrote in a message to The Herald. “It's a venue which is pretty shifty and random, so it is easy to get stressed out and start making silly mistakes."
“We stayed pretty calm as a team and figured out the wind patterns as much as we could. We had great communication in the boat and were constantly on the same page with what our plan would be for the race,” Mueller added.
In Providence, Guthrie Braun ’26 won third place out of 35 boats at the NEISA Singlehanded Championship for the Monotype Trophy.
The Bears also competed at the Yale Invitational and Hatch Brown Trophy over the weekend. The team will race in four events this upcoming weekend, including the Hood Trophy hosted by Tufts University, the Salt Pond Invitational hosted by the University of Rhode Island, the Eagle Invitational hosted by Boston University and the Sherman Hoyt Trophy in Providence.
Dennis Carey is a Sports Editor who enjoys playing volleyball, listening to and collecting vinyl records, and poorly playing the guitar in his spare time.
