Harvard Sailing Team base sinks into the river

The Harvard Crimson

Two weeks after the Harvard Sailing Center first began sinking into the Charles River in the wake of a powerful Nor’easter, the Harvard sailing team is still without a permanent training facility for the rest of the spring.

University spokesperson Aaron M. Goldman wrote in a statement on Tuesday that although the barge beneath the center has been “restored,” the facility will be closed for the remainder of the season.

“The floatation device underneath the Harvard University Sailing Center was damaged by the winter storm impacting the area on Thursday, March 8th,” Goldman wrote. “It has been temporarily restored, but will remain out of use until the conclusion of the sailing season in the spring, at which time we will determine the next steps for this facility.”

Although the facility is no longer at risk of sinking, men’s captain Nicholas Karnovsky ’19 said the team is still taking account of the financial damage and lost gear that resulted from flooding in the men’s locker room.

“I would say at this point only four or five men on the team are missing some gear,” Karnovksy said. “It’s hard to value that right now because we’re still trying to figure out what people lost exactly, but it’s probably several hundred dollars a person.”

Karnovsky said while “it wasn’t a complete surprise,” that the 47 year-old building sustained damage during the storm, the damage was “way more drastic than anything that has happened in the past.”

In the meantime, the team has been sailing out of MIT’s boathouse, just a quarter-mile away from the sailing center. Karnovsky said that while the team is grateful to MIT for hosting them, sharing facilities with two other teams can be complicated.

Read the full story at The Harvard Crimson.

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