A message from alumnus Markus Edegran ’16:
“As an alum, I am especially proud to represent St. Mary’s College of Maryland in the 2018 World Championships, Sept. 20-24, and beyond as program manager and helmsman of our M32 Catamaran. The M32 is a high performance racing machine that has attracted some of the top professional talent in the world. This tremendous opportunity is thanks to the benefactors of the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Boat Foundation. We will be racing on the waters of Lake Michigan off the Chicago, Illinois, city front this week flying the “St. Mary’s College of Maryland” branding on our mainsail along with a prominent Seahawk on our gennaker and burgee on the hull.
The last couple of weeks our team has been preparing for the M32 Worlds here in Chicago. We have been working since the beginning of the year to get the boat in place for a strong push for the 2018 M32 World Championships. Training started earlier this month when several teams gathered for a pre-world regatta. Our team was a relatively new group together and were thrown right into some very high level racing. The weekend turned out to be very windy with racing canceled on one of the two competition days. We ended the practice event in fifth place with a long list of areas to improve on. Our team has spent the last ten days since training in the same waters to gear up for the big event this coming weekend. We have been spending many hours on the water as well as on land working to improve all areas of the boat and sail setup. With new sails for the boat all branded and tuned up there should be no reason to have any problems with speed this coming week.
There will be 12 teams with the best sailors from all around the world competing this week for the World Championship title. Competitors include many World Champions, America’s Cup Winners, Olympics Medalists and Volvo Ocean Race sailors. Within our own team we have two Youth America’s Cups, 8 Youth World Championship titles, and a Match Racing World Championship title. Though, as the youngest team competing this week, we will be relying on our hard work training in the boat to overcome a relative shortage in experience. Go Seahawks!”
Competing on the team with Markus Edegran ’16 are Matthew Whitehead (USA), Taylor Reiss (USA), Mustafa Ingham (BDA), and Cameron Seagreen (AUS).
