Ranger v. Endeavour II

Racing for the America's Cup starts with a challenge to the New York Yacht Club, custodian of yachting's No. 1 trophy since 1857. It continues, when the challenge is accepted, with trials to select a defender. For the past month, in light, warm winds, three candidates for the honor of defending the America's Cup raced each other day after day on the sparkling summer ocean off Newport, R. I. They were Gerard B. Lambert's Yankee, Chandler Hovey's Rainbow and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt's new Ranger. Last week, the trials ended and on the bulletin board of the Club's Newport station, the America's Cup Committee announced its decision.

"Ranger has been selected to defend the America's Cup."

Posted on his 53rd birthday, that terse notice gave Harold Stirling Vanderbilt what he has been working for all winter. When the Royal Yacht Squadron challenge in behalf of T. O. M. Sopwith was accepted last summer. Skipper Vanderbilt was the obvious choice as his adversary. Sailing Rainbow, which most critics agreed was a slower boat than Sopwith's Endeavour I, he had contrived by sheer good seamanship to defend the Cup successfully in 1934. Ordinary procedure, in a sport where implements cost $500,000 each, is to organize a building syndicate. Instead of doing that, Skipper Vanderbilt last fall ordered a defender built for himself alone.

Shrewd enough as a card player to have invented the "Vanderbilt Convention" at contract bridge, Harold Stirling Vanderbilt is no less canny as a yachtsman. When he sold his old boat to Chandler Hovey and ordered a new one, yachtsmen were well aware that he and his famed designer, W. Starling Burgess, must have good reason to expect the new boat to be a marked improvement. Rainbow's main fault was bad balance which kept her owner busy experimenting with ballast in 1934, but correcting this was not the only aim of the new venture. Trend in America's Cup boats since 1930 has been to build up to the limit of waterline length allowed by Class J specifications. When Rainbow (82 ft.) proved faster than Vanderbilt's 1930 Enterprise (So ft.), it suggested that an even longer boat might be even faster. When Owner Sopwith, reasoning the same way, built Endeavour II four feet longer than Endeavour I, which was about the same length as Rainbow, Owner Vanderbilt's best move obviously was to follow his rival's lead--aware that, if the longer boat did not live up to expectations, the U. S. would still have Rainbow to fall back on for a defender. Before work began on Ranger--built up to the 87-ft. waterline limit--a tiny model was raced against a miniature Endeavour I, proved much faster. After Ranger was launched, she ran into bad luck promptly. Her duralumin mast snapped while she was being towed to Bristol, R. I. for fitting out (TIME, May 24). As soon as she started to race, her bad luck ceased.

America's Cup trials are divided into three series: Preliminary, Observation and Trial. The committee may announce its choice any time after the third series starts. That only one race of the Trial Series had been sailed before last week's announcement surprised no one. In seven Preliminary and Observation races against Rainbow or Yankee or both, Skipper Vanderbilt sailed his boat to seven victories in a row. Though contributing causes to them were, 1) Ranger's expert handling and, 2) the fact that both Rainbow and Yankee, whose rig has been considerably changed this year, may have been slower than they were in 1934, the seven victories and Rangers, eighth in the first of the Trial Series convinced the committee that she was by far the fastest of the three. After being selected to defend the Cup, in a four out of seven series starting July 31, Ranger beat Yankee and Rainbow in four more races for a cup put up last week by a member of the N. Y. Y. C. selection committee, George Nichols.

Challengers for the America's Cup customarily select their boat before crossing the Atlantic. Skipper Sopwith asked for, and received, leave to bring two potential challengers, select the faster of the two. While U. S. Cup contenders were racing each other last month, Skipper Sopwith was putting his two boats, Endeavours I and II, through an elaborate series of identical maneuvers designed to show which one was faster. A few days before Ranger was picked and a week before his navigator, Captain Donald MacPhee, died of gastric ulcers, Skipper Sopwith announced that his choice was Endeavour II. Endeavour II is said to be as much faster than Endeavour I, which Skipper Sopwith borrowed this spring from the friend to whom he sold her in 1935, as Ranger is faster than Rainbow. Last week her crew offered to bet on her at odds of 4-to-1.

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