REGATTA AHOY
Jacon Mayer ’10 transferred to Wesleyan partly because he’d read about its sailing club. When he arrived, however, he discovered that the club consisted mostly of a few students heading down to the river to get off campus and sail around, so he set out to change that. In the last two years he and a dedicated group of fellow student sailors have built the club into a competitive team. After a year of diligent practice in Wesleyan’s six–boat fleet of two–person “420s,” Mayer, now team captain, says he “recklessly” signed the team up for a half dozen regattas last year. To their pleasant surprise, they found themselves competing in the mid–range of a tough field—the 42–member New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association, which is by far the most competitive in the country. Mayer reports they were often ahead of Amherst and Williams. Last spring, the team got its their first coach, Tyler Burd, a recent Colgate graduate and successful college sailor. This year the team, with a dedicated core of about 15 sailors, expects to compete in 35 regattas. (See www.wesleyansailing.org/ for more.)