Yachts & Yachtsmen

(See front cover)

Admonished through calm foggy days by a soft choir of foghorns, harbor whistles and bell buoys; winked at on clear evenings by shore-lights and lighthouses, 50 of the finest U.S. sailing ships set out last fortnight on the annual cruise of the New York Yacht Club, principal U.S. yachting event of any summer when there is no racing for the America's Cup. Riding at anchor in Newport before the first day's run was Weetamoe, which Frederick H. Prince of Boston had purchased from the members of the Weetamoe Syndicate and which had won three races the week before the cruise. Riding near was Resolute, which defended the America's Cup in 1920, and Gerard B. Lambert's Vanitie, Resolute's rival in the 1920 trials. There were half a dozen Class M sloops--Walter Keith Shaw's Andiamo, sluggish in races the week before the cruise till her captain removed from her keel 100 ft. of lobster line and two lobster pots; Harold Vanderbilt's Prestige, Floyd Leslie Carlisle's Avatar, and Commodore of the New York Yacht Club Winthrop Williams Aldrich's Valiant, all with shiny new duralumin masts; and Chandler Hovey's wooden-masted Istalena.* There were four 40-footers, five 10-metre boats, two Seawanhaka schooners, and six schooners in a special cruising class never before included on a New York Yacht Club cruise.

Observers noted that though the racing fleet was as numerous as usual the accompanying fleet was smaller than it has been for 30 years. A few big auxiliaries--Cornelius Crane's Illyria, Gerard Lambert's three-master Atlantic, Floyd Leslie Carlisle's Michabo--were ready to follow the races, but of the customary squadron of large steam yachts there were only two: Hiram Edward Manville's Hi-Esmaro and George Fisher Baker's Viking. On board the Viking, because his own flagship Valiant was too small. Commodore Aldrich held a meeting of all captains the night before the cruise began.

Weetamoe beat Vanitie and Resolute on the first day's run from Brenton's Cove Light Ship to West Chop on Martha's Vineyard. Andiamo beat the other M-boats, when Prestige, after leading half the way, dropped back to finish last in her class. The second day was so foggy the race committee considered calling off the longest leg of the cruise, 73 miles around Cape Cod to Provincetown. When the fog finally lifted, there was almost no wind; the boats drifted along the rough elbow of the Cape till dark. Word came that Michabo had run aground on Shovelful Shoal off the upper tip of Long Island; then that H.G. Leslie's 40-footer Typhoon, mistaking the headlights of cars for harbor lights, had run aground on the ocean shore across the Cape from Provincetown. Vanitie, Valiant and many another were towed into Provincetown harbor; the rest, tacking slowly against a light head wind, made port late that night or the next day, when no races were scheduled.

Encouraged by the shouts, cheery or derisive, of Provincetown's Portuguese fishermen, the fleet then set out across Massachusetts Bay for Marblehead, for the first formal gaieties of the cruise. It was a day of light, following airs;Andiamo, lifting and gliding under her great spinnaker, made the most startling run of the cruise and reached Marblehead more than an hour ahead of the rest. After a day's racing at Marblehead the weather was calm again; the fleet had itself towed through the canal at the base of Cape Cod to Buzzard's Bay. There was a fresh breeze for the last day of the cruise but it chopped, changed, and finally almost faded away while Weetamoe led the fleet home to Newport.

Two days of racing off Newport ended the cruise. Twenty-two year old Elizabeth ("Sis") Hovey, sailing her father's Istalena, beat Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams (called "Chick" by fellow yachtsmen) in the Vanitie to win the Astor Cup for sloops; Rowe B. Metcalf's Sachem won the Astor Cup for schooners. Next day, in a fine fresh breeze, Weetamoe won the cup presented by King George V, beating Valiant by one second over the 30-mile triangular course.

Though dull weather made the New York Yacht Club cruise, like several regattas this year, slightly disappointing, U.S. yachtsmen have enjoyed a lively summer. Instead of racing for the America's Cup, there was the transatlantic race, won by Olin J. Stephens' yawl Dorade which, still in British waters last week, also won the Cowes-Fastnet-Plymouth race. Gales made a majority of the boats in the Fastnet race seek port before the finish; they caused the second death of the year in British yachting when Col. C.H. Hudson, joint owner of Maitenes II was swept overboard and drowned.*

New York Yacht Club members talked last week as though the club had already received its challenge, expected within a fortnight, from barnacle-bearded Sir Thomas Lipton to race for the America's Cup in 1932. America's Cup racing next year will be done according to new and stricter specifications forbidding such oddities as the Enterprise's light and springy duralumin mast, or the winches below decks which made her easier to handle. Woodenmasted Weetamoe, slightly remodelled, might well be the 1932 defender.

Depression's influence on sailing this summer has been slight; on steam and power yachts more noticeable, though with notable exceptions. The new Morgan Corsair, launched in 1930, has crossed the Atlantic six times, once in record time (for steam yachts) to Southampton (7 days, 7 hr.). A dozen or more new yachts have been placed in commission this year; the biggest is Mrs. Richard M. Cadwalader's 407-ft. 10 in. Savarona, built in Germany at an estimated cost of $5,000,000. Now being built for Edward F. Hutton at Kiel is a square-rigged, 322-ft. four-master. Cost: $1,250,000.

Depression has been a gloomy sunset gun for many U.S. yacht-owners but it has in no way curtailed Commodore Winthrop Williams Aldrich's enjoyment of his favorite sport. If the Walloping Windowblind was a capital ship for an ocean trip, so is Chase National Bank, world's largest, of which Mr. Aldrich became president when it merged with Equitable Trust, whose counsel he had been for many years and of which he had become president in 1929. Son of Rhode Island's Senator Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, he did his first sailing off Warwick, R.I. in a mainsail-rigged dory, his first cruising on his father's steam yacht. He graduated from Harvard in 1907, was admitted to the bar in New York five years later. As representative of the Rockefellers (his sister Abby married John Davison Rockefeller Jr.), he led the fight to oust Robert Wright Stewart from Standard Oil of Indiana. It was partly the family connection that made him head of the Rockefeller-controlled Equitable Trust. It is not probable that, like the crew of the Walloping Windowblind. Commodore Aldrich will ever be compelled to dine on the bark of the Rug-Bug tree or to traffic with a Chinese junk. A member of 18 clubs and seven directorates, including the board of American Telephone & Telegraph Co., he can have contempt for the wildest blow on shore as at sea.

When a man is elected Rear-Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, it is clear that, in the normal course of events, he will hold the office for three years, then become successively Vice-Commodore and Commodore. Commodore Aldrich succeeds Vincent Astor (who succeeded Harold Sterling ["Mike''] Vanderbilt) and will probably be succeeded, year after next, by Junius Spencer Morgan Jr. His fellow members have been pleased and amused by the crisp, business-like manner in which Commodore Aldrich conducts even such informal meetings as last fortnight's aboard the Viking.

Head of the syndicate which built and raced the cup-winning Enterprise last year. Skipper Aldrich was her navigator in the trials. He thinks her run against Yankee off Martha's Vineyard was "the greatest race of its kind ever sailed." In her races against Shamrock V. Skipper Vanderbilt sailed Enterprise but the Aldrich pennant, blue border and blue anchor on a white field, flew from her $40,000 mast. A better sailor than ex-Commodore Astor, Commodore Aldrich maintains no lavish steam yacht like the Nourmahal; his Wayfarer is a smaller but serviceable boat. Like ex-Commodore Vanderbilt, his favorite sport ashore is tennis. One of his brothers, William T. Aldrich, is Commodore of the Eastern Yacht Club at Boston. The New York Yacht Club's Commodore is an affable and patrician boatman, a lively but retiring enthusiast. His bitterest disdain is windless weather because it makes yachting "not very enjoyable."

*Chartered from stout-hearted George Mallory Fynchon whose Wall Street Firm of Pynchon & Co. failed last April. The Pynchon steam yacht Vasanta is now owned by Clayton W. Morse Jr., who renamed her Clador.

*In the Cowes Regatta, three weeks ago. Second Mate Friend of King George's cutter Britannia was drowned (TIME, Aug. 17).

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