THE AMERICA'S CUP

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 113, 29 May 1937, Page 17

THE AMERICA'S CUP

BRITAIN— NQW OR NEVEF ELABORATE AND CAREFUL PREPARATION WHICH BOAT SHALL BE CHALLENGER?

Commentlng on the R.N.V.R. Club's monthly dinner in London early in April, an English journalist, Mr. J. Scott Hughes, wrote that speakers on the Endeavour theme were in agreement that the preparations for the cbntest had never been more thorough. With two superlative vessels from which to choose the challenger, with months of training in American waters, and with the high-strung * keenness engendered. by such a rivalry, surely a British vessel may hope to win the America Cup. It is now or never. The Two Endeavours. Endeavour l and Endeavour II have sailed across the Atlantic, jury-rigged, during May. From then onwards until shortly before the contest, which begins on July 31, they will be matched against each other intensive training. The better vessel will be chosen as the challenger, the writer adds. The old Endeavour (if one must so speak of a peerless young lady not more than four summers old), is made available by the kindness of her owner, Mr. H. A. Andreae, who has lent the ship to Messrs P. Hill and F. Sigrist, who for their part have undertakeri to equip the vessel at all points comparable to the new one and to run and manage her throughout the season. Moreover, the old boat is to be skippered by Captain Ned Heard; perhaps the ablest of oui> big-yacht professionals, and Heard will have with him the flnest crew he can bring together. The new Endeavour will be sailed by Mr. Sopwith, of course. But he will have by him as stand-by helmsman and in a general advisory capac-

fleet, Mr. Vanderbilt's Ranger, will have been launched, and we shall, or we hope we shall, know a good deal more about the American defence policy. As far as it is at present known she is being built as our own Endeavour II was built, to th extreme limit of the J-class rule; she is to be steel-plated and riveted instead of welded. For once very little indeed has been allowed to leak out thus far as to her actual dimenslons, but if there is any truth 'in her reported keel-weight, then shc will presumably be of the maximum "alloWable length under the rule. With this dimension fixed, then her draughf and her sail area and her displacement automatlcally fall Into line with the rule-scale, and only her beam remains an unknown, quantity — and it is just with this dimension that rumour is busy. Her 'commissioning towards the end of the month (April) will bring the defence fleet up to three, and there may even be a fourth in Weetamoe now that Mr. Nichols has bought her — provided that she can be canvased and fitted out adequately for the job. The present rUles perm.it the defence to name their actual defender one week before the commencement of the series of races, so that before the third week in July the Americans have plenty of time to try out their fleet and select the best. Which it will be cannot, of course, be guessed at," but even thus early it is reasonable to vsuggest that the new Ranger will be about the last word 5n American Jclass design, but that in Yankee, now owned by Mr. Hovey, she will have a dangerous rival. Rainbow also must be' taken into serious account, but across the Atlantic it is generally felt that her short ends make her less

ity, Sir Ralph Gore, a sailor with a I record of high distinction. Captain | Williams Is her professional skipper. The differences between these two yachts may sound slight, but they are important. Th'ough both are J class vessels, the old boat is towards the bottom of permissible size, the new one at the top. Endeavour I is 83 feet on the waterline, Endeavour II is 87 feet. "It pays to go in for length," as we all know and say. But the penalty for this extra bit of length is the new Endeavour's extra 21 tons of displacement. j Last summer was so miserable generally, what with bad weather and dismastings, that unhappily these two had Scarcely a single honest-to-good-ness set-to among themselves. On top of that, the old boat had a rather indifferent lot of sails, and very little luck ever came her way. I think they met a dozen times, and the new boat had the best of these few encounters Yet there are many of us w'hose belief in in the old boat is stiil very high. Nor is it merely affection for thls beauty — which nearly broke all our hearts in the ccntest of L934. For in the next season, when Yankee came into our waters, she had ihe bettjr of Yankee, and Yankee was perhaps as good as Rainbow, and briliiantiy sailed. Still, it is not much help to keep looking astern. What we can look forward to is, I am sure, an evceeding intense struggle between these two for the honour of being chosen as challenger. Endeavour II is ari even closer-winded boat than the old boat, though you wouldn't think that possible, but there must be a doubt whether in light airs she can get the extra bulk as fast through the water. In the course of a preview, early in April of this year, yachting activities by British boats, Commander John Irving, a well-known authority pn the sport, writes: — Perhaps one should treat of the America Cup contest first, not because it is by any means the most important of the year's events, but because* at least it embraces the largest size of racing yacht. Within a few days of these lines appearing in print the new addition to the American defence ,

| likely to be the sueeessful defender 1 than either Ranger or Yankee. r Turning to our challenging fleet, there is Mr. Sopwith's Endeavour 11 and her sister Endeavour I, which, through the sporting gesture of Messrs. Andraea, Sigrist and Hill, is going across as the trial horse. In our case the actual challenger must be named not less than 30s days before the ' first race of the series, i.e., by about July 1, so that the two Endeavours will have a month of work in American waters in which to settle betwen them this knotty point. Nor can it be §aid or even guessed at which of the two will in the end carrj the burden of the challenge; each has her good points and, speaking entirely personally, I am myself inclined to ; think the first Endeavour is more likely to be a sueeessful challenger than the second. A Clash of System. So much for the shlps; tbe men who are to sail them are too well known for casual comment here. What is of interest, however, is the clash of systems which will occur when the races actually start. The Endeavours are the result of the steady building by one firm.' Endeavour II might indeed be called the grandchjld of Shamrqck V. As such she presumably demonstrates the steady improvement in British J-design from its earliest beginnings, and represents the last 'word in British conceptions of what a Jclass cutter should be. On the American side Rainbow was equally distinctly a lineal descendant of the sueeessful Enterprise, and it seems more than probable that in Ranger's design the same lineage will be traced out so that on the other side of the Atlantic the most likely defenders are also the last word in American Jdesign. Add to this the fact that the Endeavours are individualistic productions whereas the defence fleet are syndicated products of the combined talent and skill American science and design, and the dontrasts between the rivals becomes more accentuated still. (The first race takes place on July 31, and the challenging yacht must be nominated 30 days before that datc).,