The daily independent., 1937-08-03

urchin, has returned with sta
Uus cnvicd by many of the society
fox who make Newport famous.
He now is welcomed to the most
exclusive estates, he dimes on the
most expensive yachts. Men who
mean most in the United States
phone him for advice. Because
Prescott Wilson, at 40, is Amer
ica's best known and most success
full sailmaker. He is the man who
broke through the British" mo-
nopoly of making sails for Amer
icas Cup sloops, and other racing
craft.
Wilson is here with nine men
from his New York sail loft. He
has 81 more employees in Manhat-
an. He is here at the command of
Harold S. Vanderbilt skipper OF
he Ranger. Vanderbilt ordered
him here to ride herd on the
great white wings which Wander
bill hopes will power his defend
ing yacht Ranger to victory in the
currcn. international series. VIII
sen made six of the sails that
Ran, CT is using. .r..'
The great American Sailmaker
cGks younrcr han his 40 years.
Hc is a medium sized fellow with
reddish blond hair and a close
clipped reddish blond mustache.
Hc lives sails, and his wife says
he had "one tack" mind.
Wilson says, This current
Americas cup series really resolves
in 0 a battle of shippers and sails.
Yacht hulls have been developed
to about 95 per cent of perfection,
And the hullS can't be changed IN
this series. Crews have been train
ed 10 the ultimate, and they can't
be changed either. SO, the series
becomes a question of sails and
what use the shippers make Of
those sails under air conditions
governing each race"
Prescott always refers to wind
as air" because, for the % years
he has been in the sail making
business he has studied aerody-
namicS. When Prescott was 10
years Old he shifted to New York
wi his parents. He wound up his
school education in Brooklyn's
Poly Prep, intending to advance
later to a university and study
engineering, but he accepted Job
during one vacation in a sail
loft. He's been in the sail making
business ever since. The man who
owned the loft died, and Prescott
bought the loft.
Today his business is so flour
iShing that he has difficulty in
finding enough experts to hire.
He makes sails ranging from. the
SIS blobS for dinghieS to the $15i-
900 balloonerS for some class ii
sloops. He sells them from Homo
lulu to Norway. The secret of his
success is simply this: his sails
make a boat move faster than any
others.
Il know my sails are faster" he
said. Because I design them all.
And I supervise the manufacture
of them from the smallest to the
largest. Sometimes those sails are
so large that I have to hire the
list regiment armory in New
York to spread them out and sew
them. figure I know more about
sails making than any man alive
and yet, I actually know little
about it.
I'VE are just beginning to un-
derstand what can be done with
sails. I say this although men
have been using sails to power
boats ever since they could weave
a sail from reeds thousands of
years ago. We are just beginning
to understand what can be done
with air"
Because of Wilson's vague" ur1-
derstanding of mastS and air, he
went out Friday night and bet
$500 even money that Vanderbilts
Ranger would win four straight
from T. o. M. Sopwith's Endea-
YOUR.
Wilson is reported to have made
a huge quadrilateral jib Of revolt
tionary design that Tapped clear
back of the mast and formed a
sort of air funnel about it for
Vanderbilt. Prior to the series this
sail never had been broken out
or seen except by Vanderbilt and
his crew and the maker.
Here's what Wilson says it costs
to provide sails for a class j Am
ericas Cup class sloop. Each yacht
must have at least three main
sails of different cloth weight,
costing $13,5OO each, two each Of
ordinary jibs at $4,000, $4,000 and
$500, two or three parachute
spinnakers at $4,000 each, two
staysails at $2,OOS each, and five
or six Genoa jibs, balloon spinna-
kers ETC., ranging from $4,000 to
$4,000 each.
1t costs a lot of money to pro-
vide those great big white sails on
a blue sea or red sails at sunset
but the men who want those sails
can afford them. And Prescott
Wilson, who used to dig CLAIMS on
u