Intrepid Is the Word

Missing a mark in yachting is a mistake roughly comparable to shooting at the opponents' hoop in basketball or stealing an occupied base in baseball.

But it obviously can happen to the best of yachtsmen, because it did last week to no less than Emil ("Bus") Mosbacher, 45, the brilliant skipper who piloted Weatherly to victory in the 1962 America's Cup races against Australia, and is favored to do the same with Intrepid this year. There was Intrepid, skipping merrily across Long Island Sound, en route to an easy victory over American Eagle in last week's preliminary cup trials. Then Bus steered the wrong way around a buoy, had to come about --and thereby converted a 56-sec. lead into a 1-min. 2-sec. defeat.

Of course, last week's races were merely warmups, and the 12-meter yacht that will defend the 116-year-old America's Cup against Australia's Dame Pattie will not be picked until the final trials in August. So Mosbacher's mistake might soon be forgotten--were it not for the possibility that the loss could be the only one Intrepid will ever suffer. Skeptics who considered how Architect Olin Stephens could improve his design for Constellation--the boat that beat Eagle in the 1964 U.S. trials, then went on to wipe up Britain's Sovereign in four straight races--got their answer when Intrepid whipped Connie three times in a row by ever bigger margins: 50 sec., 1 min. 44 sec., 2 min. 11 sec. In two rematches with Eagle, Intrepid coasted to 2-min. 30-sec. and 5-min. 34-sec. victories, and finally, she really rubbed it in against Mosbacher's old boat Weatherly--by the embarrassing margin of 6 min. 4 sec.

It's August that Counts. Despite Intrepid's impressive racing debut, Mosbacher insisted that the boat was still a long way from demonstrating her full potential. "We've been having spinnaker problems," he said. "We've got to make changes in our sails. There's plenty still to be done." But experts were impressed by Intrepid's speed to windward--a crucial talent, since fully half of the 24.3-mile America's Cup course consists of windward beats. And they could hardly fail to applaud the performance put on by Mosbacher and his well-drilled crew during the third race against Constellation. Thirty-five times Connie tacked; 33 times Mosbacher covered; when he finally broke off, Intrepid had a lead of 1 min. 35 sec.

The other contenders are not yet ready to concede the defender's job to Intrepid. "It's who is best in August that counts," said Eagle's skipper, George Hinman, "that's when we want to be best." Still to be heard from is another challenger: Columbia, the 1958 America's Cup winner, now owned by Californian Pat Dougan and remodeled at a cost of $125,000 last year. According to Olin Stephens, who drew the plans, she is 75% new: a "skeg," or fin, has been added to her bottom to make her stiffer in the water, her stern has been shortened 2 ft. 5 in., her deck has been replaced, and her mast has been stepped aft about 1 ft. so that she can fly a bigger genoa. Now en route by freighter to New York, Columbia will not get into action until July, but Designer Stephens has assured Dougan that her new shape and fittings will make her "competitive."

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