Opposite: a rare 1851 photograph of America setting off for Cowes from Le Havre where she was hauled and repainted after sailing across from New York. She did not race in UK waters until the final day of the Royal Yacht Squadron’s members-only regatta, gaining dispensation to join the RYS fleet for their race around the Isle of Wight… A competitive outing that has caused no end of bother and expense in the years since. More than 85 years later and Harold Vanderbilt (above) is seen at the wheel of his ‘Super-J’ Ranger. The cat’s cradle pre-stressed boom is set low while Vanderbilt’s crew lie flat to further improve aero-efficiency. Sopwith’s Endeavour II was no match for Vanderbilt’s ruthless 1937 defence – Ranger was so lightly built as to be one of several ‘throwaway’ Cup defenders
drag is dominant, all other things being equal, the longer, heavier boat had to be faster. However, in the early days of the rule designers opted for waterline lengths nearer the lower end of what was allowed. This seems strange but perhaps they had in mind the lighter airs that sometimes domi- nate the New England weather during the late summer timing of the Cup. Anyway, for whatever reason the early
J boats were short. For the first iteration under the J-class Rule in 1930 the British boat, Shamrock V, had a waterline length of 81ft 1in while the American boat, Enter- prise, had a waterline length of only 80ft. For the next Challenge, the one in
question, between Endeavour and the American yacht Rainbow in 1934, those waterline lengths had risen to 83ft 3in and 82ft 4in respectively. But the British boat, designed by Nicholson, was importantly once again the longer boat and in the racing it showed. Although she didn’t win the Cup, for various reasons but particu- larly including poor tactics, she was gener- ally considered to be the faster boat. And perhaps Britain’s best chance of bringing the America’s Cup home was lost. Interestingly, in the following Match in 1937, between the same two protagonists,
Vanderbilt and Sopwith, and the same two designers, Nicholson and Burgess but now with the inclusion of Olin Stephens to partner Starling, both boats went to the maximum waterline length allowed of 87ft. Unfortunately for the British this time it was the American Ranger that was clearly faster and that was to be the end of the J-boat era. To digress for a moment, this apparent
flaw in the J-class Rule, which so favoured a long boat, was overcome by an English- man, Malden Heckstall-Smith in 1926, some years before the J-class was adopted for the America’s Cup. Malden brought together the best parts of the American Universal Rule and the European Interna- tional Rule to bring displacement into the mix, but in such a manner as to make it more relevant to its effect on performance. This rule was then used for the model A
class rule and eventually the 5.5 Metre Rule, the RORC offshore rule and eventu- ally the IOR rule itself (but in the case of the IOR using different measurements to deter- mine such things as displacement). The rule he came up with was, in its 5.5 Metre form: International 5.5 Metre (1950 to date) Rating in metres = 0.9*[{(L*S0.5 + {(L + S0.5)/4}] = 5.5 metres.
)/12D0.333 }
Where L is length measured at a height of 82.5mm above LWL plus the bow girth difference plus one-third of the stern girth difference, the girth differences being measured at the ends of measured length. There are hard maximums and minimums for displacement and sail area, a maximum draught and a minimum beam and free- board plus other restrictions. (The 0.9 in the formula is only there to make it a 5.5 Metre and avoid confusion with the existing 6 Metre. Without it, it would be a 6.11 Metre!) Another faster boat to ‘lose’ the Cup
was Alan Payne’s lovely 12 Metre Gretel II, which was defeated by Bill Ficker’s Intrepid team in the 1970 Match. The popular saying that Cup summer was that ‘Ficker is slicker’, and so he was, his well- rehearsed crew consistently outsailing and in particular out-starting the slippery Australian Challenger. There are probably a number of other
examples of matches where the slower boat won or the faster boat lost, but the one that I am going to examine next is fairly recent in America’s Cup history and my conclusions are probably contentious. It is the one that turned the competition upside down (no pun intended). It is, of
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