No excuse to lose? The phrase that Dennis Conner made famous 50 years later would not have been out of place on some of the American J Class campaigns. Man overboard techniques were crucial to the crews of the big yachts, less probably because of implications of mortality than because J Class rules stipulated that you had to finish with all of the crew that started the race or you would be disqualified. If someone went over the side two life
rings were tossed over, two crew were assigned to watch the rings and MOB, the J did a ‘quick’ stop, head to wind, headsails aback, dinghy launched stern first, two crew jumped in the dinghy and rowed as fast as humanly possible to recover the missing crew. All the best USA crews had thought this through carefully and practiced it just as they practiced everything else; their challengers rarely so. Look at photographs of the American
J Class yachts and you will almost always see a clinker dinghy tied down hanging out over the stern clear of everything and ready to launch. Several of the American boats even chose to employ pram dinghies, figuring correctly that a pram has more stability than a stemhead dinghy when sailors are rushing to leap in via the bow
fed out of the chute through the small hatch and hoisted as it was being hanked on. The Ranger crew practised this move tirelessly and it was by all accounts remark- ably smooth. It was said that you could easily miss it when it happened! The new headstay was then tensioned,
the new sail broken out, the old sail dropped, the headstay on which it had been hoisted slackened. The old sail was dragged back to the middle of the foredeck to a much bigger hatch, then passed below to be laid out, re-stopped and made ready to hoist. The whole system was worked out and engineered by Rod Stephens when he was still in his twenties. The effectiveness of a quad genoa over a
Top: Ranger in build at Bath Iron Works in Maine. It is an indication of the US pride involved defending the America’s Cup that when Vanderbilt had doubts about the cost of another Cup campaign the yard’s president promptly offered to build Ranger at cost. Centre left: Olin Stephens keeps a watchful eye on his owner’s performance – the same stance is also often seen in modern owner-driver fleets... (normally without the music). The Merriman coffee grinders of which Ranger carried three were greatly superior to anything seen before though ultimately they were not as powerful as the slow ‘rowing’ winches seen still in use on Endeavour II (right). Also on Endeavour note the quick release hooks for the running backstays (a lot of rigs came down in the J Class era...). Above: one of – possibly the – the first uses of synthetic fabric in a sail, Ranger flies her rayon Greta Garbo quad (left) as she reaches home to close out the 1937 defence. Ranger’s vast genoa (right) was only flown in very light air and made pointing difficult, the Cup defender also carried the largest spinnaker ever made at 18,000 square feet...
the Greta Garbo was dropped and replaced with a smaller cotton quad. They did not want to risk the Greta Garbo as they did not know the stretch characteris- tics nor how much wind it would stand. Ranger was also the only J Class that could quickly change headsails. She had
54 SEAHORSE
two headstays with a simple arrangement to slacken the headstay on which there was no sail set. Immediately aft of the headstay was a small hatch. Beneath the hatch there was a 25ft oval-profile aluminium chute, in which the next stopped-up headsail was laid out ready to go. When needed it was
triangular genoa is perfectly illustrated by two photos in Vanderbilt’s own work, On the Wind’s Highway: Ranger, Rainbow and Racing. The photographs are taken from astern, Ranger hard on the wind, quad genoa, triangular genoa. The quad has no twist at all. The draft is forward where it belongs, while it is easily seen that on the triangular genoa there is excessive twist and the draft has moved aft. Since Ranger was the only J Class that
could disconnect her staysail stay when the genoa was hoisted it meant she could also tack much faster than the other Js who had to horse the big canvas genoa through the relatively small space between the head- stay and staysail stay. Every time Ranger and a competitor tacked Ranger picked up at least a minute or more. Ranger was not a super hull, but rather
a good hull on which were carried a super mast, super sails, rigging, winches and a super crew who operated it all perfectly. With thanks to New York YC historian
John Rousmaniere who was most helpful in preparing this article.
q
ROSENFELD/MYSTIC SEAPORT
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