Ocean Race

Forty-three sturdy little sailboats stood out of Newport, R. I. last week, headed southeast across 635 miles of open sea for Bermuda. The biggest fleet ever entering an ocean race, the 43 sloops, schooners, yawls, ketches included many a new craft, many a famed oldtimer. Newest was Robert P. Baruch's 53-ft. sloop Kirawan, launched only a month ago. Most famed was Vadim Makaroff's 72-ft. adapted-ketch Vamarie, known to yachtsmen as "often a bridesmaid but never a bride," because she so frequently crosses the finish line first only to lose the race because of her small allowance handicap. Last week's finish proved no exception. First over the horizon at St. David's Head, Vamarie crossed the line four minutes ahead of the schooner Brilliant. When the race was over, however, neither had won, for brand new Kirawan, finishing third, beat them both by her 13-hr. time allowance. Time of the winner was 4 days, 20 hr., very slow because of a 50 m.p.h. gale which swooped down on the fleet in the Gulf Stream, made the race the roughest in 13 years, forced six yachts to scuttle back to the U. S. with split sails, broken rigging.

As navigator aboard Brilliant last week was 45-year-old Alfred Fullerton Loomis, one of the most experienced ocean racers in the world. On a submarine-chaser during the War, Sailor Loomis has spent most of the years since then scudding about the world in small sailboats. A veteran of one transatlantic, two Fastnet, four Bermuda races, he is an accepted authority on small-boat sailing, the author of severa topnotch nautical books. Last week, as he stood on Brilliant's deck watching victory slip from his grasp, there was published in Manhattan another top-notch Loomis book, Ocean Racing,* the first thoroughgoing history of this hazardous sport of rich men.

In 1866, four wealthy New Yorkers got into an argument over which had the finest yacht. Upshot was the first ocean race, across the Atlantic from Sandy Hook to the Isle of Wight for a pot of $90,000 between Pierre Lorillard's 105-ft. Vesta, James Gordon Bennett Jr.'s 107-ft. Henrietta and the 106-ft. Fleetwing of George & Franklin Osgood. Choosing December as the windiest month, these three schooners set off with professional crews, many a misgiving in a rising wind. Vesta and Henrietta had their cockpits boarded over but not Fleetwing. On the eighth day, wallowing through a heavy gale at night, Fleetwing shipped a sea which carried eight men overboard. Two were swept back by the next comber, but the rest were lost. Despite this tragedy, Fleetwing finished second, 40 minutes ahead of Vesta and only eight hours behind Henrietta, winner in 13 days, 21 hr., 45 min.

Four years later came the next ocean race, with the 108-ft. English schooner Cambria beating the U. S. schooner Dauntless from Ireland to Sandy Hook by only 1 hr., 43 min. Two Dauntless seamen were lost.

There was not another ocean race until 1887 when Tycoon Rufus T. Bush offered to bet $10,000 on his new schooner Coronet in a race to Cork, Ireland. Caldwell H. Colt, son of the inventor of the Colt revolver, promptly took him up, entered the old Dauntless which he had bought six years before and which was admittedly past her prime. ''Colly Colt," wrote Sailor Loomis last week, "was a nearer approach to the present genus of ocean racing man than anybody who had yet flashed across the scene. He raced, not as Bush did, vicariously from his cloistered home on the Heights, nor yet as Bennett had done, for the glory and the prize at stake, but because he knew he would have a hell of a good time." In the race against Coronet, everybody's good time was abetted by the fact that Dauntless burst her water tank, forcing the crew to drink champagne for the last half of the trip. Dauntless was driven so hard she strained her seams, but Coronet was the better boat and won by 30 hours.

Next ocean race, last for the big boats and professional crews, came in 1905 when eleven yachts representing three nations lined up at Sandy Hook to race to the Lizard, England, for a gold cup donated by the Kaiser. Wilson Marshall's 185-ft. three-master Atlantic won handily, set a single day's record of 341 miles, which is still unbeaten. Thirteen years later the Kaiser's Cup was given to the Red Cross. In a series of auctions it netted $125,000 before someone discovered it was only gold plate.

In 1906, with the first Bermuda race, ocean-racing entered its second phase, with small boats, amateur crews. Since then there have been twelve Bermuda, three transatlantic, nine Fastnet races, all open only to small boats, sailed by daredevil crews. Whereas the big schooners of 1866 timorously hove to in a gale, the little craft of today plunge nonchalantly on through anything, hardly bothering to shorten sail.

On the Pacific, too, there was ocean racing, beginning in 1906 with the first of ten races from California to Honolulu. In 1925 four Pacific yachts made the world's longest ocean race. 3,700 miles from San Francisco to Tahiti. So far, the Pacific has taken no lives. On the savage Atlantic the toll has been constant. One man was lost in the 1931 Fastnet race, another in the 1932 Bermuda race. Most poignant tragedy of all was last year in the trans-atlantic race to Norway, when owner Robert Ames and his two sons were lost from the ketch Hamrah in a gale.

Ocean Racing is by a sailor for sailors. It is tersely, accurately, spicily written, replete with statistics, pictures, charts which make it indispensable for any nautical library. For the landlubber who likes manly, exciting adventures vividly told, it is well worth-while provided he occasionally takes Author Loomis' advice as he dives into technicality: "At this point in my narration all but the most fanatical devotees of ocean sailing will have skipped to the next chapter. . . . But I plunge on with the faithful. . . ."

* Morrow ($4).

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