Yachting: Intrepid for the Defense

No man to shilly-shally is Commodore Henry Morgan, 66, chairman of the New York Yacht Club’s selection committee, whose job it was to pick the U.S. 12-meter yacht that will defend the America’s Cup against Australia’s Dame Pattie starting Sept. 12. The final selection trials were only a week along when Morgan politely informed Bob McCullough and George Hinman, the helmsmen of Constellation and American Eagle, that their continued presence on the 24.3-mile course off Newport, R.I., was no longer required. The decision was hardly a shock: Connie, the 1964 Cup defender, was obviously slower than her syndicate-mate, Intrepid, and Eagle had lost all four of her races in the last series of trials.

That cleared the decks for the final battle between Bus Mosbacher (TIME cover, Aug. 18) in Intrepid and the California entry, Columbia, jointly skippered by Briggs Cunningham and Bill Ficker. Knuckle-nosed and stumpy, Intrepid was the clear favorite: she had lost only one race (out of 18) in the summer-long Cup trials—when her navigator laid a course to the wrong buoy. But Columbia had shown some spirit: in the last race of the four-boat round robin, she lost to Intrepid by a trim 1 min. 39 sec.—after Ficker beat Mos bacher to the start, and Cunningham outsailed Bus on a dead run.

That was as close as Columbia ever got. In the first of their final, head-to-head duels last week, Intrepid skimmed away from Columbia in light, fluky winds and coasted across the finish line 7 mins. 45 sees, ahead. Dismayed by the magnitude of their defeat, Columbia’s crew took a desperate gamble: hauling the boat out of the water, they labored all night to strip off two tons of ballast. All to no avail. Next day, in a freshening 12-knot breeze, Intrepid proved herself infinitely superior to windward and swept to a 3-min. 51-sec. victory. Commodore Morgan and his committee had seen enough. After a brief condolence call at Columbia’s dock, Morgan marched over to Mosbacher and he announced that Intrepid had been chosen to defend the Cup against Dame Pattie.