Faster Through a Loophole

When the fleet set sail out of Stamford, Conn, for the 25th annual round-trip race to Martha's Vineyard, skippers blinked at the sight of Bill Luders' 39-ft. Storm: she was carrying no boom and no mainsail. But when the fleet made it back to Stamford, Luders had sailed off with the race. Storm's win dramatized the fact that in distance racing these days, victory often goes not to the fastest but to the designer who gets the mostest out of The Rule--the complex, 27-page system of handicapping spelled out in detail in 1934 by the Cruising Club of America to even up boats of various shapes, sizes and styles.

The formula picks out the theoretically fastest ("scratch") boat, assigns varying time allowances to boats that are theoretically slower. The hope was that it would allow boats designed for seaworthiness and family cruising to compete with racing machines. Bases for the formula were assumptions that were sacred 30 years ago: fast boats must have deep keels, tall masts, narrow beams; slow boats have the opposite.

Since World War II. designers have been busy as sea lawyers (or sea serpents) looking for loopholes, and building boats to make the most of them. Scion of the family-founded Luders Marine Construction Co., wiry, blond Bill Luders, 49, is one of the U.S.'s best sailors (at 16, he was 6-meter champion), knows the formula like his arithmetic tables. This year he realized that the formula assumes the boat will carry a mainsail, allows the use of jibs of any size without penalty. By weighing anchor without a mainsail for the Vineyard race, Luders got a bonus of an extra four hours' handicap. Instead of using Storm's normal headsails, he hoisted a gigantic genoa jib that was fully 34 ft. at the foot, had an area of 716 sq. ft.--more than the regular mainsail and fore-triangle combined.

Under her unorthodox rig, Storm sailed fine, both on and off the wind. She finished 3 hr. 18 min. 26 sec. behind the scratch boat. But with the extra four hours' handicap, Storm won handily, beat the fleet on corrected time.

Luders' coup came just as the Cruising Club rule committee was sitting down to the thankless task of considering revisions of the formula. Loudest gripe is against the designers' most successful postwar innovation--short, wide-beamed center-boarders that not only run faster off the wind but also drive relatively well into the wind matched against their deep-keeled rivals, who have to give them time under the formula. Most famous of these boats is Olin Stephens' Finisterre, which all but revolutionized ocean racing by winning the Bermuda race in 1956 and 1958.

At least the committee will not have to worry about Luders' fouling up other major races. "I wanted to point out the loophole to the committee," says Luders, "and I wanted to try out the rig to see if it would work. But this is the last time. We've had our fun."

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