Giving Them the Bird

As of now, the Eagle screams.

In the first week of America's Cup trials on Long Island Sound, the Aurora Syndicate's brand-new American Eagle sailed off across the starting line seven times--and seven times came home victorious. It was all just practice as far as the New York Yacht Club was concerned. The boat that will defend the 113-year-old America's Cup against Britain's Sovereign or Kurrewa V will not be picked until after the final trials off Newport in August. But in the meantime, American Eagle was doing a pretty good job of "selecting" herself. In the New York Yacht Club's annual spring regatta, she whipped both Columbia and Constellation, the other highly touted new twelve. Then, in head-to-head races, she beat them both again and took two straight from Ted Hood's Nefertiti. Finally, to top off her week, she really rubbed it in against Constellation--by the embarrassing margin of 5 min. 31 sec.

Strong & Straight. Blue-water yachtsmen had expected Eagle to be good--but not that good that soon. Eagle was only 18 days old when she won her first race. Her architect, A. E. ("Bill") Luders, 55, had never designed a 12-meter racing yacht before. Her skipper, William Cox, 51, was supposed to be a small-boat sailor at heart, had not handled a twelve in 27 years. And her young crew was so nervous that when they tried to set a spinnaker, they dropped the pole bang onto Eagle's deck.

But all that seemed academic once Eagle started racing. Aiming for an all-weather boat, Designer Luders had purposely given Eagle a low center of gravity to make her point higher in high winds, a shortened keel to lessen drag in light air. In gusty, 15-knot breezes, she stood straight as a shark's fin; and she ghosted gently through pockets of virtual calm, finding momentum where none seemed possible. In all of the seven races, Skipper Cox outmaneuvered his rivals at the start, pouring backwind into their sails and slipping out in front. And when it came to tacking duels, he and his crew strutted some impressive stuff. In one contest, on the second day of the trials, Constellation tacked 17 times in 20 minutes. Eagle covered so efficiently that she gained an average of 2 sec. on each tack.

Don't Blame the Boat. The other boats were still far from disgraced. Columbia, gem of the 1958 America's Cup but badly outclassed in the 1962 trials, regained enough of her glitter under New Skipper Walter Podolak to beat Nefertiti and Constellation--the Californian's first victories in America's Cup competition. Constellation herself, with a record of two victories and five defeats, was still in the running. The only real disappointment was Ted Hood's Nefertiti. Glamour boat of the 1962 trials, the beamy Marblehead yacht got all the way to the finals before losing out to Weatherly, and many experts felt that Nefertiti was the better boat, credited Weatherly's victory mostly to the remarkable helmsmanship of Skipper Bus Mosbacher.

This spring, Designer Hood shaved Nefertiti's keel to get more speed in light air, and he was a mite discouraged by his boat's record of four losses, only one victory. "It's too early to start blaming the boat," he insisted. "Our tactics need sharpening. Twice in a row, we overstood the windward marks. Several times we used the wrong spinnakers. We're just making mistakes."

American Eagle's rivals hope it will be a different story in the next series of trials in July. A dour Connecticut Yankee who started racing "dog boats" off Martha's Vineyard when he was twelve, Bill Cox is an old hand at judging tides and winds in protected waters, knows Long Island Sound as well as his own bathtub. He will lose that advantage when the twelves move to wide-open Rhode Island Sound. There, 6-ft. swells are common, and the boats sometimes race in 40-knot winds. But if he was worried, Cox did not show it. "The boat is great," he said. "This crew is the best any 12-meter ever had."

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