Sport: Off Gloucester

Amateur yachtsmen seldom get excited about races between the fishing schooners of the Grand Banks. They feel that fishermen ignore the finer points of yachting. Furious brawls, after races off Gloucester and Cape Cod, have resulted from the claim that one boat fouled another. The fishermen sail according: to fishing rather than sporting tradition. They crowd sail on their boats at all times, not realizing that under certain conditions a boat carrying less sail will move faster. In one race with the Canadian champion, the U. S. competitor came in first because one of its topsails blew away.

Several things went wrong as the Gertrude L. Thebaud of Gloucester, Mass. and the Bluenose of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia got ready for the international fishermen’s races last week. On the way to Gloucester the fore topmast of Bluenose buckled. The Gertrude L. Thebaud sprang a leak in her stern during a practice spin. She was hauled out and re-calked. Such a leak meant nothing at all, insisted Captain Ben Pine. Boats built for work instead of pretty racing must show marks of their trade once in a while. Gertrude L. Thebaud was designed by Frank Paine, who turned out the America’s Cup yacht Yankee.

Special trains ran from Boston. An excursion steamer went out from Yarmouth. The automobiles of country people moved in slow procession along Hesperus Avenue* and Bass Rocks Road. Canadians were bettingeven money on Bluenose although it looked as though Captain Pine had the best crew. Aboard the Thebaud were Captains Powers, Johnson, Mallock, Sparrow, Prior and Domin-gos—masters all. On a day of white piling seas the two boats put out around the 37-mi. course. Though a 14-knot breeze was blowing, Captain Walters of Bluenose scoffed the idea that the weather was rough. Rough for amateur yachtsmen, perhaps, with their useless boats that have to duck into harbor whenever a breeze strikes up.

Both boats as usual carried every stitch of canvas they had. Often The baud dipped her rail into the wash, but Bluenose, heavier and longer, stood up. Before long Thebaud pulled away. Her sails were better cut and set and she pulled smoothly into the wind; Bluenose’s big mainsail was so ungainly that Captain Walters had to swing it by the topping lift; her topsails were shapeless sacks. When Thebaud had won the race, twice round the course with an extra lap up Gloucester harbor, by 15 minutes, Bluenose’s sails were rushed to a loft to be recut.

*Named after the schooner in Longfellow’s “Wreck of the Hesperus.” At the mouth of Gloucester harbor is ”the reef of Norman’s Woe.’