The Boothbay Region Sailing Club (BRSC) team returned to SailMaine in Portland this weekend for the Casco Bay Open. The event was a qualifier regatta for the Atlantic Coast Championships (ACC) to be held in New York in November. Seventeen teams from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine attended. The mid-morning start was postponed three hours due to heavy fog and lack of wind. Race Committee managed to get eight races in less than three hours on single windward-leeward courses averaging 8-12 minutes in length rather than 18-20 minutes.

The Falmouth team won the regatta with 33 points followed closely by Yarmouth. Falmouth had qualified for the ACCs earlier allowing Yarmouth to gain a berth in the ACCs. The Boothbay Region Sailing Club team finished ninth of 17 boats although two teams dropped late. Boothbay’s best finish was fifth place in the second race.

In the first race, Boothbay’s A Boat crewed by Lincoln Academy’s Ella Beauregard and skippered by Liam Cullina ran the line on starboard for a pin end start but ran out of room. After returning to start correctly the pair managed to fight their way to the favored left side of the course and finish ninth. The second race they started well and continued to the left again. Rounding the weather mark in third with Sharon and Yarmouth close ahead and above, the pair jibed quickly but found the others gained an advantage with more wind. Cullina and Beauregard took fifth with their best finish of the day.

The B boat sailed by Boothbay Region High School senior and co-captain Nate Graves and freshman skipper Nate Rideout found the starts more agreeable, going left early but finding themselves in a Yarmouth-Marblehead sandwich one above and one below. They battled these two teams and Islesboro in all four races. Graves and Rideout managed finishes of 10th, eighth, 10th, and 10th in admittedly difficult light and lumpy conditions for the pair. 

In the third race for the A Boat, Cullina and Beauregard found a pile up of boats at the weather mark slowing every one down. The lead boat from Falmouth fouled the Isleboro boat by tacking inside the zone at the weather mark and bringing that boat to a halt hung up on the mark. The Falmouth boat couldn’t round either, did penalty turns, then went back and took the Boothbay boat head to wind to avoid collision. The Boothbay boat finished ninth and did no better in the final race. 

Poor weather is expected this week for practice with the team counting on at least one day in the classroom rather than on the water. Saturday the team competes at SailMaine for Cape Elizabeth’s Gale Winds Classic and a JV event on Sunday. The following week the team heads to Rockland for the second of the Pen Bay Series hosted at the Apprenticeshop.