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It was the beginning of the end and Hawaii sailing coach Andy Johnson couldn't have been happier. UH coed sailors in first
with 2 days left in regattaBy Grace Wen
gwen@starbulletin.com"I have somewhere between two and three brain cells left," Johnson said, only half jokingly.
The last three Intercollegiate Sailing Association championships in Honolulu got under way yesterday.
The North American coed dinghy championships is the oldest of the six collegiate championships (men's single-handed, women's single-handed, sloops, women's and team racing) and considered the premier event of the sequence. Its point value is counted double in the tabulation for the Leonard Fowle Trophy, the annual award given in recognition of the team of the year in collegiate sailing.
Coed racing follows the same format as the women's championship with A and B divisions. The combined lowest score after three days wins the regatta.
Through the first six races, Hawaii is in first with 61 points. Old Dominion is second with 72 points and Boston College (73) follows in a close third. Racing continues today at 9:45 a.m.
Blue skies, warm waters and 15 knot tradewinds made yesterday seem like just another average day of sailing at Keehi Lagoon.
The crowds thinned a little, but the enthusiasm of those remaining had not wavered. The cheers for the Rainbows' first place finish in the last A division race were just as loud as the first day of racing.
Sailing for Hawaii were Bryan Lake and Jennifer Warnock in the A division. Lake skippered the Rainbows to two first-place finishes and one second. Lake and Warnock's 19 points were the lowest score in any division by far. It was a feat driven more by will than anything else.
"I'm really tired going into the day. I've been sailing for six days," Warnock said. "My body just hurts, but my mind is so set on winning this national championship.
"We went out there and we were like 'we're going to win these last two'. We knew we were faster than all these people and this is our wind."
In the B division, Molly O'Bryan and Sarah Hitchcock started the regatta for Hawaii. But the arduous task of competing in nearly every single race for the Rainbows since last Wednesday took its toll on O'Bryan.
After her fourth race of the day, the three-time All-American told Johnson that she hadhit a wall and couldn't finish the day.
Joey Pasquali and Lindsey Peters competed in the last two B division races to help UH widen its three-point lead to 11 over ODU.