Word: skippers
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...Block Island (west southwest) turned the slow seas of the day before into a chop. There were about half as many yachts around the starting line as for the first two America's Cup races of 1930. People had been saying that Enterprise could not lose so long as Skipper Vanderbilt kept sail on her. The course signals were up and both boats jockeyed at the line like boxers feeling each other out. Now the first drama of the series occurred. Captain Heard on Shamrock V timed the start better, had his boat over the line in the windward berth...
...Skipper Vanderbilt too had been watching Shamrock closely. As the sail fell, he whipped Enterprise about. The committeemen were coming over in their boat. They shouted at Vanderbilt, telling him to go on. The rules of the America's Cup races provide that if one boat is disabled the other is awarded the race, whether or not she completes the course. Skipper Vanderbilt knew that, remembered how Shamrock IV had won the first race of the series in 1920 by a similar accident. He sailed over to Shamrock V and came around her to make sure no one was hurt...
Gently Enterprise's clean white nose splashed at the water. Skipper Vanderbilt looked her over: below, where some of the rigging comes down through the hollow metal mast; on deck, where many new mechanical gadgets are?the "sliding-foot" boom, the instrument for indicating windstrain on the mast?that caused his boat to be called "mechanical" by conservative sea-dogs. Aboard the shiny green Shamrock V Edward ("Ted") Heard, Sir Thomas's professional Captain, looked his boat over. She had not many gadgets, but her aged owner, on his Erin, had a good-luck message from President Cosgrave...
...weather freshened up a bit, the wind veering to the east. Both vessels took in their spinnakers for a reach (wind broad abeam). At the halfway mark shirtsleeved Skipper Vanderbilt went wide. Shamrock V, less than three minutes behind, passed close enough to the Thomas F. Moran to pitch a cork aboard. Both boats, breaking out jib, baby jib, topsail and staysail, started on the homeward reach (wind close abeam). From then on the challenger, reputed "ghoster," was no match for the defender. At the 25-mi. mark, Enterprise, her sails taut, her happy crew sprawled along the weather rail...
Second Race. Two days later weather conditions were more favorable, with a fair southwest wind. The Committee boat's little flags announced the course: triangular, 10 mi. to windward, then 10 mi. southeast-by-east, then back to the starting point. Skipper Vanderbilt crossed the line neatly as the starting gun boomed, stepped out in front and to windward of Shamrock V, from which a ton of lead ballast had been removed. Strategically, Enterprise kept her advantage, tacking with Shamrock V, keeping her rival out of the wind and at a disadvantage as a hawk follows a pigeon. Unable...