Plucking at the Eagle

The final trials to pick a U.S. 12-meter for next month's America's Cup defense were hardly under way before half the contenders were gone. In the first four days off Newport, R.I., last week, those two hopeful veterans, Columbia and Nefertiti, each absorbed three more scrubbings from American Eagle and Constellation, the new girls in town. Officials of the New York Yacht Club Selection Committee decided to waste no more time. Hopping into a launch after the third defeat, they motored out to extend their thanks and regrets to Columbia's Skipper Walter Podolak and Nefertiti 's Ted Hood. That cleared the decks for the long-awaited head-to-head duel between Eagle and Constellation.

Earlier this summer, yachtsmen had little doubt that Eagle and her brilliant skipper Bill Cox, 52, would fly away with the prize. In two sets of preliminary trials during June and July, Eagle won twelve straight races, including three from Constellation, whose crew could not seem to do anything right.

But then in the final race of the preliminary series, Constellation's helms man Eric Ridder was replaced at the wheel by Bob Bavier, 46, advertising manager for Yachting Magazine and long known as one of the East Coast's hottest sailors. All of a sudden the crew seemed to come together, and the big white boat started to move. Constellation had a 100-yd. lead on Eagle before fog rolled in to cancel the race. Bavier was back at the helm when the sloops met again in the New York Yacht Club cruise races, which do not count toward cup selection but can have considerable effect on crew morale. In six races Constellation sailed home ahead four times--and now Eagle's feathers were beginning to look a little frayed around the edges.

Newport jangled with rumors of arguments among Eagle's crew. Skipper Cox, swallowing earlier statements about "the best crew any 12-meter ever had," bounced veteran Deck Boss John Nichols and one alternate. Concerned about the boat's sluggishness in light air, Eagle Designer Bill Luders narrowed the forward edge of her keel, replaced the lost weight with inside ballast, and reduced the rudder area.

Two More for Connie. The fixes had little effect--at least last week. In their first meeting in the finals, Constellation handed Eagle the worst beating in the history of 12-meter cup competition, winning by a full mile and 11 min. 42 sec. in light winds. A good bit of the margin, moreover, was due to a costly goof by Eagle's reshuffled deck crew; when the jib halyard parted, a new jib was clipped on the wrong way, and it took four minutes to get things straight. By then Constellation was long gone.

Two days later they were at it again, and this time Eagle made it exciting. As usual, Cox won the start for Eagle, defended masterfully through a series of furious tacking duels, and led Bavier's Constellation around all five marks of the 24.3-mile Olympic course. Turning the final buoy for the 4 1/2-mile upwind beat to the finish, Cox had a 22-sec. lead. Then Bavier set a new jib on Constellation and launched an exhausting short-tacking drive; 17 times in 15 minutes he put about, gaining a precious second or two on each tack. At last, on the 17th try, Bavier cleared Constellation from Eagle's cover, drove through to leeward and carried into clear air to win by 1 min. 8 sec.

On the committee boat, Yacht Club officials watched it all in traditional tomblike silence. Other yachtsmen thought that Constellation under Bavier was clearly emerging as the better boat in light to medium air. But the two boats had not yet been tested against each other in the kind of heavy 15-25-m.p.h. winds that often blow across Rhode Island Sound in September.

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