CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— In the final week of the Fall 2025 season, the Mariners Open Dinghy Team returned to the Charles River for the 84th Professor Erwin Schell Trophy and NEISA Conference Championship, earning a program-best 16th-place finish at the fast-paced and prestigious event.

"This is the fastest fleet that we sail against all year," said Associate Coach Delaney Conlogue. "The teams at this regatta make up over half of the fleet at the national championship final."
According to the Race's Committee's Saturday condition report: it was a tricky day on the river with a very shifty northerly breeze that ranged from 2 to 10 knots. Many races were abandoned when major shifts or large lulls created unfair conditions.

The Mariners team rotated skipper-crew combinations in A Division. Alistair Knoblauch ('29) and crew Gregg O'Rourke ('28) started the event tentatively with an especially deep A-Division fleet stacked with top-ranked skippers from across New England but improved throughout the day as they figured out the patterns of the course and fleet. In B-Division skipper Toby Clarkson ('29) and William Ries ('26) found their rhythm early earning a top ten finish in the first race and managed several competitive starts that put them in strong positions up the first beat that resulted in solid mid-fleet finishes. Skipper Finn Deprez ('29) and George White ('27) rotated in for the final race of the day, managing to keep boats behind them at a time when scores condensed.

Attempting to describe the frustration that comes from sailing at a venue that frequently defies predictions junior crew George White paraphrased a 2025 Tyler Childers song saying, "to put it plain...the Charles [River] is high on my bitin' list."

Sunday delivered similarly challenging conditions as a weakening northwesterly gradient produced large shifts and wind velocity that ranged from up to 10 knots to tauntingly just below the 4-knot minimum wind requirement which caused a few races to be abandoned after the start.

First-year Isabel Dickson subbed in as A-Division crew for Deprez in the light air. Dickson brought fresh energy and perspective while quickly adapting to a new skipper pairing—a strong showing of composure and versatility in challenging conditions.

While the scores reflected the difficulty of maintaining lanes in such variable air, the A-Division group showed clear growth from race to race.

The B-Division duo of Clarkson and Ries showed signs of frustration to start the second day, but their perseverance and patience paid off in races 12 and 13 where the pairing regained the confidence and speed needed to once again break into the fleet.

Despite the tricky conditions and tough competition in one of NEISA's quickest and most disciplined fleets, morale remained high. "We proved that we have the capacity to nip at the heels of the Nationals level teams," said Assistant Coach Nathan Hyde.

 Sophomore crew O'Rourke summed up the weekend and the fall Open Dinghy season saying, "We know what we need to do—we know what we need to bring to our practices and what we need to execute in the spring season."

FULL SCORES