This past Friday the UC San Diego Sailing Team traveled to Long Beach for the 34th annual Rose Bowl Regatta. As this event is both a college and a high school regatta, it provides the chance for  high school students to interact with college teams from all around the country. In fact, each of the twenty-eight colleges in attendance (and a few that came but did not sail) were given the chance to speak about their schools and specific sailing programs to the prospective high school sailors at dinner on Saturday night. As far as the sailing, the conditions were near perfect out on the water despite the dismal forecast. Rather than there being no wind all weekend, we were met with around 5-10 knots of wind throughout the weekend. The biggest challenge facing the sailors this weekend was having to beach to change out rotations! Although the waves were not particularly tall, trying to manage the boat in the wind and the break was very difficult, leading to broken rudders capsizes. The Tritons took 26th against some of the best schools in the nation, from as far as Cornell University and as close as CSU Long Beach. A big congrats to Georgetown University for winning this fun event!

This is my second time going to Rose Bowl, and it really is one of the most fun events of the year. I think it is invaluable to be able to speak with high school students to tell them about our program ad our school. It is also very interesting to learn how other schools run their programs and listening to the differences in “varsity” and “club” teams. Being able to meet teams from outside our conference is also an exciting experience. There are very few chances for college sailors to meet people from every single conference in the nation. The actual sailing is also a different experience to what we experience normally. The courses are more complicated than the ones we normally sail and the competition is more intense due to inter-conference rivalries. I am sad that this will have been my last Rose Bowl regatta, but I would like to thank my teammates and other college friends for making it a great regatta!

-Natalie Hopper