The Speed of the Modern Yacht.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 131, 13 June 1901, Page 3

The Speed of the Modern Yacht.

There is no doubt a champion yacht is an oxpensivo investment. It is true that sho does not take something like ,£IO,OOO a year to keep her going—which is asserted to be tho annual expenditure on some of tho millionaire yachts. But what with manganese bronze, and aluminium, and other luxuries, the sail yacht easily runs into thousands of pounds. All this money is supposed to bo devoted to the task of making the yacht fast. But when all is dono tho racing yacht, judged by any ordinary standard of terrestrial locomotion, is distinctly slow. When wo read about yachts “flying ” over tho sea, we have to rocollect that they are seldom, even for a short distance, going 'so much as fifteen miles an hour. The Columbia, it is assorted, nover logged more than ten knots an hour. The Defender, in 1895, is said to have reached fifteen knots an hour under half a gale of wind, but she never approached this speed in fair weathor. Tho worst of it is that thoro is among experts a well-founded belief that the old American “clipper” of fifty years ago would have simply walked away from the modern Valkyries, and Defenders, and Shamrocks. Whon the English yacht was beaten in the last race for the America Cup, an experienced onlooker declared publicly that a boat built on the old plan “for reaching into the wind and not chewing into it, wculd leave the Shamrock and its rival standing still.” In 1850, before the America first won the Cup, she was defeated by the sloop Maria. This famous craft is credited with seventeen knots an hour in smooth water and with a fair breoze. The Henrietta crossed the Atlantic some years ago in thirteen days, at an average of nearly ten knots. The Vigilant and the Navahoe, two of the best yachts of their day, took sixteen and nineteen days respectively over the trip—averaging about eight and seven knots each. Now, if we go back to the early part of the century, we find that tho Salem in 1812 constantly averaged thirteen knots, even when heavily loaded with stores and ammunition. The clipper Flying Cloud is said to have logged twenty-three knots, and oven if this famous record is mythical, thoro is no doubt that forty years ago the best sailing boats absolutely “smothered” the steamers of the day when it came to a race. Yet in those days there was no mathematical science involved in shipbuilding—there were no abstruse problems about lateral resistance and wetted surface and aroa of flotation. The sails were of common duck, and as far as shape and “hang” went, might have cut with a circular saw; yet these boats, rigged and built according to “rule of,thumb” certainly attained speeds that are not reached by the most extravagant of modern yacht architects. Hero is a problem which ought to be worth the while of tho Watsons and the Herreshoffs to consider.