The Wake

Those who don’t know the athletic endeavor that is sailing, might at the mention of the sport, conjure up images of smarmy gentry sipping martinis at dockside and occasionally taking the dingy out for a spin.

Once you meet the University Sailing Club you will get to see the sport for what it really is: a lot of work and even more fun.

“Our practices run three days a week until it basically snows,” senior co-captain Kelly Nichols said. “But it’s a lot easier to practice on the lake in the fall before the water freezes, than it is in the spring when it’s just thawing out.”

Until that first snowfall, the 17-member sailing team practices three days a week at Wayzata Yacht Club on Lake Minnetonka before they have a regatta each weekend. With the weather turning cold, the team has broken out their all-weather gear, which keeps them warm if they ever take a spill into the deep blue of Minnetonka.

Sailing can get pretty rough depending on the winds. Nichols said keeping the four-meter long boat at a good speed and in the right direction requires tremendous toughness and athletic ability.

“[Sailing] really builds your abdominal and quad muscles,” Nichols said. “Our hands are always getting calloused and torn apart and we get a ton of bruises on our legs and arms.”

Nichols said that she and her other female teammates compete to see who has the most bruises on their legs.

“Sometimes my dad won’t let me wear a dress out in public because my legs are covered in bruises.”

Acquiring bruises and other nagging injuries is a birthright of a sport where two people must cooperate on a relatively small boat that is completely wind-powered. The crew and skipper have to play angles of wind and physically steer and balance the boat to keep the boat sailing. And they must do it well to get ahead of the pack.

During a regatta teams usually compete in four different events: team, women’s, co-ed and singles. Singles is the only competition where there aren’t two people on the boat.

On October 18 at the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin Single-handed Regatta, senior co-captain Ben Burgum qualified for the National Singles Regatta in St. Petersburg, FL.

Burgum, who grew up sailing on Pelican Lake in northern Minnesota, took second at the event and is excited to compete against “all the great Eastern schools.”

“We have developed one of the top teams here in the Midwest,” Burgum said.

In past years, the Gophers have ranked nationally in the top twenty against the likes of many varsity teams.

“It is tough to compete nationally against teams like Harvard, Charleston and Old Dominion who are varsity sports and have top recruiting,” Burgum said, “But we do learn a lot and by racing against them and we have a lot of fun staying with some of those teams when we travel.”

Sailing team members say that traveling around the country and meeting other teams is what makes the sport so fun.

“We almost always get there by van and we almost never stay in a hotel,” Nichols said about the team’s weekend trips that include destinations like Ohio, New York and New Orleans.

“Sometimes there are 20 of us packed in a hosting team member’s house.”

All the hard work invested in fundraising, traveling and time commitment amount to one thing for the sailing team members: too much fun.

Nichols said the team gets together nearly every Thursday evening to bond, which includes a ritualistically watching of the movie “Old School.” The team also sings into late hours of the night.

“We like to joke around and call ourselves a drinking team with a sailing problem,” Burgum said.

The team’s “work hard, play hard” attitude is paying off, Nichols said.

“We are the best team on campus that no one knows about.”

For more information on the sailing club, log onto www.tc.umn.edu/~sailing