Ledyard — A quick trip on a trail through the woods Saturday afternoon revealed hundreds of jovial Yale and Harvard alumni catching up at Red Top, the Gales Ferry home of the Harvard Men's Heavyweight Crew.

Just a day before the 150th rowing of the Harvard-Yale Regatta, the oldest intercollegiate sporting event in the United States, some were there to participate in an alumni row, where more than 20 boats went out in waves.

Others — spouses, children, alumni and former crew members no longer rowing — came to socialize and watch their friends of old get back in the shell.

Some, active in the regatta committee or otherwise, had seen each other recently, but many hadn't in decades. In several cases, spouses met one another for the first time.

"For the most part, I'm seeing people I haven't seen for years," said Bill Endicott, who rowed for Harvard in the mid-1960s. "It's great finding out what they've done and what rowing meant in their lives."

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For Endicott, the reunion of sorts was significant in multiple ways.

It was at the 1964 Harvard-Yale Regatta, also known as the Yale-Harvard Regatta, that he first met his now-wife, Abbie. This year, they said, is their 50th wedding anniversary year.

The boat in which Endicott rowed Saturday, with a crew made up mostly of 1968 and 1970 alumni, was special, too. A 1968 Harvard graduate, Endicott went on to coach canoeing and kayaking at the Olympic level after he graduated. Through that job, he met and coached Norm Bellingham, who won Olympic gold in kayaking for the United States in 1988 before joining Harvard and its crew in 1990.

"He's here and he's going to be in the same boat I'm going to be in for this alumni row-by, even though we're 20-some-odd years different in age," Endicott said. "We had a special arrangement so we wouldn't just go by class, but I'd get to row with Norm."

Oddly enough, Bellingham this year is in his 50th year of life.

In the same boat was Garrett Olmsted, a 1968 Harvard graduate who coached Radcliffe Crew, the oldest women's rowing program in the Ivy League, in its inaugural 1971 season.

Sporting a crimson crew shirt with a white H above the word "Radcliffe" on the left breast, Olmsted said he came to "row for Radcliffe."

Many of the boats of both Yale and Harvard alumni seemed to carry with them a similar historical significance, including Harvard's The Love Boat. Made up of members from the classes of 1959 through 1965, the boat was so named to commemorate the late Harvard Crew Head Coach Harvey Love, who died in 1963. Some boats, though, featured oarsmen from classes as recent as 2014.

Throughout the afternoon, the clouds of navy and crimson were separate at times — not in a hostile way, but rather, a natural one. From time to time, graduates of the rival schools would come face-to-face, smiling and laughing as they talked.

Michael Curi, member of Yale's Class of 1997, was one of those. He and 1997 Harvard graduate Jonathan Feeney described themselves as "friendly rivals."

"We raced against each other for four years," Curi explained. "These guys set the standard for what rowing excellence was, so it was something for us to try to live up to."

For many years, including the past eight, Harvard has gotten the best of Yale. But, Feeney reminded Curi, Curi and crew took the 1996 Harvard-Yale Regatta.

"It wasn't great for us," Feeney said with a laugh. "But we were super impressed. It's amazing that the two programs have been so competitive for so long."

Curi, now a member of the eight-man regatta committee, has been back for the past several regattas, but there hasn't been a pre-event quite like this one.

"To be part of this, to come back and see some of the guys you don't see a lot is really neat," Curi said.

Both said seeing all the alumni together reminded them of their days at their respective Gales Ferry boathouses — days they said were some of the best of their lives.

"We're old enough to realize we're also going to be that age one day," Feeney said, scanning the crowd. "We look at those guys and we say, 'You know what? That's not so bad.' These guys are out here, some in their 70s, still friends with their classmates, still coming back to the same place."

"It's a really special thing."

l.boyle@theday.com

Twitter: @LindsayABoyle