Off Newport

Off Sakonnet Point, where rocky capes bracket a two-mile beach, off Brenton's Reef Lightship and the Narragansett shore where curious eddies twist in the shallow surf, there began last week the solemn business of picking a yacht to defend the America's Cup next September. After a week of trials, to be followed by another series in July, a third in August, the New York Yacht Club's selection committee had seen this year's three contenders under sail six times.

Trials. Most interesting to the committee was Harold S. Vanderbilt's brand new Rainbow. In the first race. Rainbow ghosted around a 17-mile course nearly three minutes ahead of Frederick H. Prince's Weetamoe. Gerard B. Lambert's old bronze Vanitie, built for the 1914 Cup races, which the War cancelled, came in far behind. Next day. Yankee, owned by a Boston syndicate and skippered by one-time Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams, came out for the first time and lost to Vanitie while Rainbow was again beating Weetamoe. For the third race, there was a light breeze. Over 30 miles, windward and leeward from Brenton's Reef Lightship to a buoy off Block Island and back, Rainbow won for the third time in a row while Yankee, considered a slow boat in calm weather, surprised the committee by running away from Weetamoe.

To be official, races have to be finished in five and a half hours. The fourth trial, in flickering airs, lasted longer than five and a half, but when it was over, yachtsmen were less sanguine than they had been about Rainbow. Weetamoe, sailed by Richard Boardman, had beaten her off wind and on over a 34-mile course, by a mile and a half. There was an 18-mile breeze, just the kind of weather Yankee likes, for the fifth race but Skipper Adams went to the Harvard commencement exercises while Rainbow nosed out Weetamoe.

A light drizzle cancelled the next scheduled run. When racing was resumed, Yankee won by 58 sec. over a 28-mile triangle. In a collision just before the start, Rainbow's bow made a dent in Yankee's bronze plating.

Contenders. Racing for the America's Cup cost approximately $1,000,000 an hour in 1930. Rainbow is considered by Harold Vanderbilt an economy boat. Using some of the equipment of Enterprise, the Cup defender which beat the late Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock V in 1930, she cost only $5,000,000. Rainbow was built in 97 working days at the Herreshoff shipyards at Bristol, R. I. where Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, now 85 and retired, had designed and built five successful defenders. Rainbow was designed like Enterprise by William Starling Burrgess. She has seven suits of sails, each consisting of 2 miles of canvas, weighing 1 1/4 tons, costing some $25,000 most of which has been handed down from Enterprise. Her 165-ft. duralumin mast was made by the Glenn L. Martin airplane plant in Baltimore, shipped North in sections. When he selected her name, Skipper Vanderbilt sentimentalized thus: "Rainbow is an omen significant of rift, and parting of the clouds, indicating fair sailing and better times ahead...."

Weetamoe and Yankee, both contenders for defending the Cup in 1930, were remodelled to conform to this year's rules. Yankee, a heavy weather boat which holds the record for the 30-mile Cup course, had her bow sharpened to make her faster in light airs. Frank Paine, her designer, raised the money by subscription in Boston. Weetamoe had her keel weights deepened and moved forward to make her more seaworthy. The New York syndicate which owns Whirlwind, slowest of 1930's four contenders, did not recondition her this year. vanitie, under this year's rules, is ineligible to defend the Cup; she raced last week to keep the others company.

Challenger. A new rule for the America's Cup races gives the challenger the right to change entry up to within 60 days of the first race, if trials produce a faster boat than the one named in the challenge. While Weetamoe, Yankee and rainbow were racing off Newport last week, England was having America's Cup trials off Cowes. In three races, Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith's new Endeavor, in which he and Mrs. Sopwith expect to cross the Atlantic this month, beat her trial horse, W. L Stephenson's Velsheda, twice. Unlike the Shamrocks which were all green, Endeavor is a pale hydrangea blue. She is built entirely of steel except for a mahogany rudder, silver-spruce boom and pine decks.

The Cup,worth $500, has been in Tiffany's Manhattan vaults since 1857, when it was presented to the New York Yacht Club by the owners of the little schooner America, which had won it in 1851. America, later called Camilla and Memphis, was used as a despatch boat in the Civil War, later sold for $5,000. In 1901 she was put in drydock at Boston. In 1921, she was presented to the U. S. navy. Now at Annapolis, America is the oldest of the 5,338 yachts listed in Lloyd's Register of American Yachts.

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