ESP Biography

ROSALIND (ROBYN) LESH, MiT Sophmore, studying Engineering and sailing

Major: Course 2-OE Mech-Ocean Enginerin

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: 2016

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Q:How long have I sailed for? A: Forever.
My parents took me sailing for the first time when I was six days old, in the middle of January. (was a nice day or something) Option 1, my parents are crazy. (possible) Option 2, never too young to start sailing!

I call my family the boat/sailing family. My dad designs and builds model sailboats for a living and we ship them to customers all over the world. When my sister and I were young we'd go on long sailing trips whenever mom and dad felt the inclination. So in essence, sailboats ~= me.

I've sailed on big boats since I can remember and raced littler boats in middle school and high school. I've been sailing on the MiT sailing team and in a couple weeks I'm racing in Women's Single-handed Nationals in Newport, RI.

Sailing is neat because there are so many types of sailing, once you know how, anyone can sail!

Past Classes

(Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

X8077: How sailing works - Intro to sailing in Splash! 2013 (Nov. 23 - 24, 2013)

Ever wanted to know how sailboats go? Want to learn how to SEE wind on the water? Curious about what people are doing when they're sailing around on sailboats? Come learn about boats, the wind and the basics of how to sail!

X8078: Sailing theory, hydrofoils and other random sailing things. in Splash! 2013 (Nov. 23 - 24, 2013)

So sailboats. They don't have motors or any mechanical form of propulsion. Only wind blowing over the sails makes them move. And yet, some boats can go even faster than the speed of the wind that propels them! Come learn how this works, how boats like the America's Cup trimarans can levitate out of the water on hydrofoils and some other really neat sailing things! (We're going to see some videos of some super cool boats ;D)