Confident Challenger

Sceptre looked good--from the clean curve of her underbody to the long, sharp sweep of her bow. But just eight months after lucky gold sovereigns were tossed into molten lead and her keel was cast on the shore of Scotland's Holy Loch, Britain's yare challenger for the America's Cup also looked a slow boat. In a dozen tune-up races with an elderly twelve-meter trial horse, Evaine, the gleaming Sceptre had been beaten every time. Last fortnight as Sceptre was hauled out of the water for inspection and checking, squalls of criticism blew across Britain.

With 14 weeks to go, reported the Times of London gloomily, Britain's current attempt to regain the America's Cup "was deemed to have all but failed." Boating buffs remembered 1939, when Evaine herself was beaten handily in British waters by the U.S.'s visiting Vim, now one of four potential U.S. cup defenders. There were better helmsmen available, critics argued, than Sceptre's 34-yearold skipper, Lieut. Commander Graham Mann, onetime sailing master for the royal family. As a matter of fact, some added, there were altogether too many navymen in the challenger's afterguard. They acted as if they knew it all, and were slow to get down to serious training.

Teething Trouble. Sceptre and her crew stood up sturdily under the storm. "The Evaine is tuned up," explained one of the challenger's defenders. "The Sceptre has not had her full wardrobe of sails and has had the usual teething troubles with some of her gear." Special new winches had indeed not worked up to specifications; there were changes scheduled for the ship's elaborate rigging. More important, Sceptre's sleek, white bottom was fouled with assorted marine growth. Like the aspiring U.S. cup defenders, she was protected by hard, slippery synthetic paints, not with antifouling compounds such as coated Evaine's undersides. When clean, the enamel-like finish on Sceptre could be counted on to boost her speed.

Most important alibi of all was the weather: Sceptre had lost to Evaine in light airs and in sheltered waters. She was designed to be at her best in the rough autumn winds expected off Newport when the cup races start in September. "We fed statistics about Rhode Island conditions into our calculations," said Test-Tank Superintendent Bill Crago, who helped choose the winner from the eight designs submitted to Britain's Royal Yacht Squadron. "Out came Sceptre."

The winning design came from the drawing board of 55-year-old David Boyd, a Scotsman whose principal earlier success was the six-meter Circe, which in 1938 beat all comers in the international matches. Sceptre's African mahogany planking, her steel and oak frames and her 20-ton keel were skillfully transformed into a racing yacht under such rigid security that outsiders are still uncertain about all her essential statistics. But her 44 ft. on the waterline come close to the dimensions of all the cup defenders; so does her 12-ft. beam and her 70 ft. of overall length. Her sails are of Terylene (British equivalent of Dacron), and her running rigging is of the same material (with each rope dyed according to a quick-handling color code--blue, green, white, red or yellow). Below decks, even her plumbing is of synthetic Polythene, instead of copper, to save weight.

Sceptre's most radical feature is her cockpit layout. The helmsman and navigator each have their own small cockpits. The main cockpit is deep and large, designed to keep the weight of the crew low in the boat and their heads out of the helmsman's line of vision. The yawning cockpit may gulp dangerous amounts of water when the going gets rough, but Sceptre is fitted with an oversize pump to handle such an emergency.

Complete Satisfaction. Royal Yacht Squadron members who opened their pocketbooks to pay for Sceptre (cost: about $100,000) were the least concerned by the mounting criticism. According to Syndicate Chairman Hugh Goodson, the big white boat had not yet begun to race. Up to now, said he, Evaine had acted merely as a yardstick against which Sceptre's experiments with technique and equipment could be measured. He was, he said, "completely satisfied."

He had no reason to change his mind last week when Sceptre went back in the water, her bottom clean, a new mainsail set, and some brisk weather making up in the open sea off Poole. She beat Evaine three times. Wrote the London News Chronicle's yachting correspondent, Vernon Brown: "Experts are becoming more confident."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.