Finals

In the warm, exciting routine of swimming and horse-racing, parties and roulette which constitute social life on the east coast of Florida, outboard motorboat racing this winter assumed an international air. After the first series of races at New Smyrna (TIME, March 12), there began a round of entertaining at Palm Beach. John Sanford gave a party for the Italian drivers--Prince Carlo Maurizio Ruspoli, Count Theo Rossi de Montelera, Antonio Becchi. The French drivers-- Publisher Jean Dupuy, Baron Alain de Rothschild, Marquis Gonzalo de la Gan-dara--had a tea given them by Mrs. Frederick E. Guest. Last week, the last heats of the races were postponed so that all the drivers could motor to Miami and watch Time Clock win the Florida Derby, and attend Harry L. Doherty's dinner at the Miami-Biltmore. The next day. a crowd of 20,000 gathered along the shores of Lake Wrorth, the narrow blue inlet between Palm Beach and the mainland, to watch the finals of boats powered by Class X motors for the William Randolph Hearst Trophy and the championship of the world. Drivers who had won at least one of the nine earlier races were eligible for the final. Young Horace Tennes, Northwestern University sophomore who wears a brace on a neck he broke diving last summer, had won four. France's Dupuy had won two. Gandara of France and Barella of Spain had won one each. Tennes' U. S. teammate, Walter Everett, crowded into the final by winning a special heat for boats that had placed second without get- ting any firsts. Dupuy, a daring driver who heeled his boat around the buoys so sharply that it resembled an oldtime cinema comedian turning a street corner, got away fast and held the lead for one complete circuit of the course. Tennes, away third, passed Everett on the first lap, caught Dupuy on the second. Chewing gum furiously, hunched in his cockpit like a football lineman, he drew away steadily for the next four laps, roared across the finish line with nearly a mile of open water behind him. Outboard motorboat racing depends partly on the motor, partly on the driver's skill. Tennes' cockleshell Hootnanny VI had a good motor but his was by far the best driving in the series. When he crossed the finish line in the final race, his brother Monty and his two mechanics were so joyfully excited that they fell overboard from their skiff. Said young Tennes, in a hurry to leave Palm Beach and get back to college: "It was a great race." Outboard races were not the only ones Palm Beach had to get excited about last week. For the regatta, Italy had sent over three boats of the 12-litre class which raced against the closest U. S. equivalent --Gold Cup craft, with superchargers. A minute before the third and last heat of the 12-litre race, for the Vincent Bendix Trophy, Count Rossi de Montelera. heading for the starting line in his red Barracuda, smashed into a little rowboat which he had failed to notice in his path. In the rowboat were the Marquis de la Gandara and his mechanic. They were fished out safe and sound but officials refused to give the Count time to patch the hole in the Barracuda's bow. It made small difference in the result. His teammate Becchi, veteran automobile and motorboat racer, who wears plugs in his ears because years of driving high-powered motors have made them oversensitive, drove to his third consecutive victory in his cigar-shaped, aluminum-hulled Lia V powered by a 500 h. p. Isotta-Fraschini. Jack Rutherford got second with his Imp.

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