With Lake Michigan just barely unfrozen, the Loyola Academy Sailing Team is ready to get back out on the water.

After an extremely successful fall season the Loyola Sailing Team is ready to get back on the water and compete this spring. The spring season is shorter than the fall season with only four regattas but seemingly more important considering the fact that two of the four regattas are national qualifiers and one other is the State Championship.

This weekend with no spring practice under their belt due to weather, the Ramblers will be sent into the first of four regattas at the Chicago Yacht Club Belmont Station. This regatta is affectionately named The Ice Breaker regatta because of it only occurring five days after the end of winter.

“I’m definitely more of a warm weather type of gal,” said senior Lexi Chigas, “but we do live in Chicago so we have to deal with the consequences of sailing here in the Spring.”

Chigas says that in order to sail in the spring sailors have to wear drysuits in order to protect themselves. In addition they have to wear insulating boots and gloves to eliminate the risk of hypothermia.

The regatta this weekend will be hosting 16 teams from the Chicagoland area and will serve as a “warm up” for the qualifying season. The big contenders at this regatta are the usuals: ETHS, New Trier, UChicago Laboratories, and St. Ignatius Chicago. The rosters for most teams don’t change much from fall to spring so we can expect that they will have similar performance to what they had during the fall.

“Evanston Township sailing is definitely going to be a power house this year,” said Evanston sailing senior and Captain Charlie Herrick. “We’ve been working harder than any other team on and off the water for the last three seasons and this will be our season to show everyone what that work was for.”

These teams may seem like a threat to Loyola right now, but Chigas said to “not worry. We’ve beat all these teams before we can beat them again. Although ETHS has a strong A fleet boat, the rest of their team isn’t as good as Loyola.”

In high school Sailing in order to have a successful team there needs to be multiple successful boats. Most teams only have one good boat, but luckily the Ramblers have three, cementing their spot as one of the top Chicago sailing teams.

All in all, even with the frigid weather and good competition projected this weekend, Loyola is not only in a good position to do good this weekend, but also in a great position to dominate this season.