A different understanding of ‘competitiveness’... In almost every way the Ranger (opposite) defence of 1937 was a notch or more above her British challenger Endeavour II (above right). Note how Ranger is more prepared and ready for a man overboard incident with her pram dinghy out over the transom with two throwing rings while Endeavour carries her dinghy lashed amidships where deployment will be much slower. Ranger’s quad sails were also much larger than Endeavour’s and her smallest quad was larger than the biggest quad sail on the British yacht. Endeavour’s sail plan also suggests less grasp of airflow with great ‘holes’ in the foretriangle wasting much of the potential for a slot effect – ironic given that Endeavour’s Tommy Sopwith was an aviation pioneer
cent overlaps so needless to say with any wind a bear to trim. She had Merriman no6 winches, same mechanical advantage as the no7 but smaller drum diameter. I complained to Herb Davidson, head of
Nevins rigging department, that we were stalling out trying to flatten the genoa. Herb had evidently spent his youth at Merriman Brothers and knew of all sorts of fittings and castings that no longer showed up in their catalogue. He said that Merriman for the Js made an oversized handle with two sockets. You started out cranking on the inner socket, then when stalling out lifted the handle off and put it in the outer socket that extended the lever from 10-inch to 14-inch increasing the mechanical advantage from 18:1 to 25:1. Herb went away to dig, found the
patterns and Ondine soon had herself a set of new more powerful winch handles! When I bought my now over 100-year-
old yawl Iolaire she was very much under- winched. What winches she had were so small you needed a magnifying glass to find them. Over the years I gradually improved the winch situation. In the early 1970s I latched onto two old single-speed Barients. Then I plagiarised Merriman: I made a two- speed handle. I took a winch handle, cut off the grip and had a machine shop extend the existing 10-inch handle to 14-inches. The crew started cranking on the inner stud and when they stalled switched to the outer stud. It was a great way to increase power at minimal cost. That handle was highly admired, so highly admired it was stolen.
Of Ranger’s 23 winches, three were new
Merriman coffee grinders with the remain- ing 20 all Herreshoffs, some dating back to 1903. An examination of photographs reveals that Whirlwind had all Her- reshoffs, Yankee and Wetamoe had a mix- ture of Merriman and Herreshoff winches. The former British challenger Shamrock
had flown triple headsails which were all relatively small with the standard double sheet arrangement. Their size was in part a reflection of the fact that British boats still only had single-speed ungeared winches, at least until Endeavour’s aviation tycoon owner Tommy Sopwith designed a large- diameter bottom-action winch. This was powered by two men seated on the deck around the winch, each with a handle that via gears and ratchets drove the winch like two men rowing a boat. Ian Dear in his fine book about the Js, Enterprise to Endeavour, suggests these more compact winches could employ as many as four speeds and develop two tons of line pull. Looking at the photos in Ian Dear’s
book it is interesting to note that it looks like the first Endeavour had four rowing winches while Endeavour II had no less than eight. I also noted in another photo later taken in 1938 a pedestal-type coffee grinder forward of the helm of Endeavour. It was a small pedestal, the size of a pre-
sent-day coffee grinder, that was obviously linked to drums via below-deck gearing. The two-man Endeavour pedestals were certainly quite innovative… unfortunately for the English challenger Ranger was
already using similar-sized pedestals that could be driven by four men! In the 1934 Cup series the double
luff/parachute/symmetrical spinnakers had come in but they were still not gybed. Instead, when gybing the spinnaker was dropped, pole switched, or second pole set and spinnaker reset. In 1937 Rod Stephens worked out the double-pole gybe but the race committee told him the way the rule was then written such a gybe was illegal. The first time a J Class spinnaker was
actually gybed was in the mid-1990s when Elizabeth Meyer had restored both Endeavour II and Shamrock and raced them together in Newport. In 1934 the quadrilateral headsails were
still long and narrow. Genoas were crudely triangular and relatively small and really only used going to windward in light air. In 1937 the quads were getting bigger.
Vanderbilt on Ranger carried this to the ultimate with five quads of various sizes. The largest was Ranger’s enormous 150 per cent Greta Garbo – an experimental sail made of rayon, a new form of fibre and the forerunner of nylon that Dupont was in the early stages of developing. They made a batch of material heavy and strong enough for what they thought would make a good J boat light-to-moderate wind genoa. Dupont gave the material to Vanderbilt,
who immediately passed it on to Ratsey to make the big quad genoa. The sail was fantastic. When Ranger set
it she left her competitor trailing. But once they felt that they were far enough ahead
SEAHORSE 53
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