Word: skippers
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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...
...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...
...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...
Manhattan Real Estate Man Walter S. Gubelmann, Commodore Harold Vanderbilt, Briggs Cunningham and 28 top-notch yachtsmen. Skipper: Eric Ridder, 45, who has raced to more than a dozen ocean victories as captain of Gubel-mann's famed yawl Windigo and has chosen a crew seasoned with Windigo sailors. They have already been training for six weeks on an old twelve rebuilt to match Constellation's deck layout...
Veterans & Families. Then there is Nefertiti, which narrowly lost out to Weatherly last time and has undergone extensive face lifting. "Among other things, we've made the keel finer to offer less resistance," says Skipper Ted Hood, 37. "She ought to be as effective in heavy air as she was in '62 and a good deal better in light air." Columbia, the 1958 victor, will be on hand with the first West Coast crew ever to take a crack at Cup competition. Cornelius Shields has sold her to California Yachtsman Thomas Patrick Dougan, and her new skipper will...