New-York tribune., 1901-03-31
AN INTERNATIONAL MEASUREMENT RULE.


Members of the New-York Yacht Club seem to
have realized that the time may be drawing near
when the sailing for the Americas Cup may have
TO be done on the other side of the ocean. And it
has often been brought their notice that if the
great yachting trophy should pass to English
guardians during the continuance of their pres
ent rule for measurement of racing yachts
the club, its best amateurs and its favorite de-
signers would all be found unprepared to produce
the kind of craft which would then be necessary.
In case British yacht should win the Cup the
next challenge races would have to be sailed
under the racing rules of the tenant club which
had produced the winner The present meas
urement rule in England. lately settled by it's
Yacht Racing Association, and the rule which
has governed in several previous years have
both provided for taxation of boats grth.
while in the last law on the subject the dmen-
sions of a yachts hull are measured with ex-
treme care, so as to penalize in a practically
prohibitive way some abnormal physical de-
velo3ments which under the old New-York
Yacht Club rule were ignored in the estimation
Of n yachts power for the regulation OF time
allowance. A result of this has been that II the
Cup went 10 England next August the Ameri-
would have to compete against designers
who have had several years experience in pre-
pairing racers under their local girth rules. In
de.bodies and otherwise the English would nat
uraliy he possessed of accurate information OF
the kind which practical experiment alone pro-
vides
The New-Yorl< Yacht Club therefore seems
to have acted wisely in setting committee to
work on a new rule which shall embody at least
some OF the pecullarities which viii have to be
dealt with here in case the Cup takes another
ocean trip, and it may be among the possibili-
ties that IL the English designers Watson and
Fife cOllaborate with members of the club and
with Herreshoff. Crowninshield and other promi-
nent American designers an agreement may
eventually be arrived at which will in time
provide international measurement rule for
racing yachts 1t was shown years ago in these
columns that no matter what faults the inter-
national rule might possess 1t would be the
same for both sides. and it with this in
view that the Yacht Racing Union of North
America sent its delegate TO England TO confer
with the yachting authorities there, in order If
possible. to come TO some agreement that would
end the great dissimilarties between the vessels
Of the two countries and promote frequency of
international contests. A rule embodying
measurement of girth then recommended
and passed by the North American Union. but
even by those clubs which made II a part OF
their racing rules it was subsequently dropped
Dy some because IL was 100 TOuDleSOHlS, DN
others because il too English. and by
few because it not the NewYork Yacht
Club which proposed il. The general idea of il
was, however. entirely right as we have said
all along and il is interesting now to hear of
the proposal TO work along the same lines
in which the North American Union produced
apparently satisfactory result few years
ago and which at the time the NewYOrk
Yacht, Club refused to cOuntenanCe.
1t would however. be utopian to express a
confident hope that an agreement for an interna-
tional rule will be arrived at at any early day.
When the English passed their last rule they
wished to cut out invention and all kinds of
abnormal developments and to compel racers
to he semi-cruisers of a general model which
is at least fifteen years out OF date. It is an
open secret. however that there was another
idea besides this, namely that if the Cup were
won the Americans would be compelled to build
their challengers under hard and fast rules
which could be expected to nufy and even
Danish those dreadful American qualities-hard
thinking, unsleeping effort and the invention
which these give birth to-