OCR Text |
Show COLUMBIA BEATS CUP CHALLENGER SHAMROCK II IN MOST EXCITING YACHT RACE EYER SAILED. Columbia Crosses Line ThirtyOne Seconds Ahead in a Thirty Mile Race. ' During Which the Contending Yachts Were Abreast . ' Nearly the Entire Distance, : In the closest and most soul-stirring race ever sailed for the America's cup, the white flyer Columbia Saturday beat the British challenger over a windward and leeward course of thirty nautical miles by the naxfjUfflaJieart-breaking margin of thirty-nine seconds. ' As Lipton's latest aspirant for cup honors As a spectacle the contest was superb. su-perb. From the time the two sky-scraping sky-scraping racers crossed the starting line until they fled across the finish line four and a half hours later, the result was in doubt, and the excitement excite-ment aboard the excursion fleet increased in-creased until men became frenzied and women almost hysterical. So evenly matched were these two scientific racing machines that never after they started were the riva skippers out of each other's hail, and more than three-quarters of the time they were so close that Charlie Barr, who had the tiller aboard the Columbia, Colum-bia, could have tossed a biscuit to Captain Sycamore on the Shamrock. For miles as they beat their way to the outer mark the black shadows of Shamrock's huge club topsail was painted on the mainsail of the Columbia, Colum-bia, and for an hour on the run home, with the yachts flying like scared deer before the wind, they ran almost beam and beam, as if they were harnessed together. The result of the race makes the possession of the cup a matter of grave doubt. There are five races to be run, the conditions of some of them being in favor of the Shamrock, and so evenly even-ly are the boats matched that the slightest accident or error will decide the race. Races are scheduled for Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The cup has been in America half a century, cen-tury, and its loss would now be a keen disappointment. wem; COLUMBIA. must allow the defender forty-three seconds on account of the extra square feet of canvas in her sail area, the official record under the rules gives her the victory by one minute and twenty-two twenty-two seconds. |