Procedure

Yacht racing for the America's Cup is divided into three stages: 1) negotiation; 2) construction; 3) sailing. Last week in Manhattan, preliminaries to next summer's races started to proceed from Stage One to Stage Two when Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, who helped underwrite and skippered the successful Cup defender in 1934, announced that, instead of heading a syndicate to finance the 1937 defender, he would build one all by himself. The new boat will cost some $400,000. She will be the first individually owned defender in 50 years. Because her designer, W. Starling Burgess, works for the Bath (Me.) Iron Works she will be built there instead of at Herreshoff's Bristol, R. I., yard, birthplace of all defenders since 1893.

Most ceremonious event in contemporary sport, the America's Cup races cannot be expected to go all the way from one stage to another with one undignified leap. Specifications for next year's boats, drawn up by the New York Yacht Club's cup committee, still have to be approved by Challenger Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith.

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