SAILING FOR HOME

After an afternoon's practice on one of the nation's chilliest college facilities, the Dartmouth sailing team heads for the dock. The home water of Mascoma Lake is easy to look at but tough to sail gorgeous mountain scenery makes for tricky wind during the half-hour-long races, giving the team the kind of home advantage that the Red Sox enjoy in Fenway Park.

The sailors also do well away from home. Last spring the co-ed varsity team took 13 th at the National Championships in San Francisco Bay, while the big (44 ft.) boat team tied Navy in Annapolis for first in the nation. And all this despite remarkably limited sailing time. Mascoma Lake is frozen well into April, and Dartmouth must compete in three-quarters of the season's regattas before they hold a single practice.

The program is self-funded with the help of alumni and parents, and Coach Bill Hearst, a retired naval officer and former commander of the NROTC at Dartmouth, volunteers 60-odd hours a week in the fall and spring. Team members must pay for lodging when they compete on the road. "We drive down to Annapolis in a van, and the basketball team gets flown to Hawaii," sighs sailor Ben Schwartz '91.

Nevertheless, he concedes that travelling is the best part. "Seeing other schools," he says, "makes me appreciate Dartmouth more and more."