Jan. 5, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
I 
If 
! 
:| 
1 
1 
the rule of the road at sea provides that the 
yacht which is overtaking shall keep out of 
the way of the yacht which is overtaken. The 
English rule of yacht racing has always gone 
on to say that .“a yacht may luff as she pleases 
to prevent another passing to windward.” 
Hitherto there were no end of protests and dis¬ 
putes over the questions, “How long may she 
continue to luff?” and “when should the over¬ 
taken boat be counted to have ceased to be 
luffing, for the purpose of preventing the over¬ 
taking boat passing to windward? and at what 
point does any further luffing become mere 
luffing for the purpose of causing a foul?” 
There were so many arguments and heated 
disputes over these points that the Y. R. A. 
decided to add an explanatory foot note to the 
rule, as follows: “The intention of this rule is 
that an overtaken yacht may luff as she pleases 
to prevent another yacht passing to windward, 
until she is in such a position that her bow¬ 
sprit end or stem, if she has no bowsprit, would 
strike the windward yacht abaft the main- 
shrouds when her right to prevent the other 
having a free passage to windward shall cease.” 
The critics of course observed that if the orig¬ 
inal rule was so badly worded, and so obscure, 
that it required another “rule” or “note” to 
make it clear, it was time it was altered. How¬ 
ever, this did not turn out to be the case in 
practice. Luffing always has been, and prob¬ 
ably always will be, the joy of all practical 
sailors. Every sportsman loves to luff his op¬ 
ponent, and luff him to the very last inch the 
rule permits. The foot note it appears was 
just the very thing everybody wanted. The 
principle of making one rule to explain another 
'may have been a wrong one, but putting that 
on one side, every sailor could understand the 
simple and practical wording of the foot note. 
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. 
Protests and disputes vanished as if by magic, 
and what was “the surprise and delight” of 
those who drafted the rule to find that the New 
York Y. C. had actually adopted the. word¬ 
ing of the foot note in their racing rules of 
1904 and 1905, and had embodied its all im¬ 
portant principle in their new racing rule XIII 
of 1906. The luffing rule, which has now been 
made doubly clear by the foot note, and which 
is now identical in England and America, is 
a very old one in England, having been in 
force since the earliest days of yacht racing, 
and I hope it will not be long before it is 
universally adopted. 
In America, up to the year 1903, a different 
rule existed, an overtaken yacht might only 
luff as she please, provided she began to luff be¬ 
fore an overlap had been established. In Ger¬ 
many, on the other hand, the overtaken yacht 
might not continue to luff after an overlap had 
been established, and I believe, although I am 
not sure, this rule still exists in France. At 
any rate I know that when racing in Germany, 
one used to be obliged to place a pair of eyes 
on the end of the counter to observe the pre¬ 
cise moment to desist from luffing, in order 
to observe the rule faithfully. 
The Cercle de la Voile de Paris has agreed 
to throw open the one-tonner cup to the new 
6-metre class under the new international rule. 
This is the first European event of an inter¬ 
national character and will take place at Meulan 
on the Seine in May, 1907. Entries may be 
sent in up to December 31, 1906, and challenges 
for the cup have already been received from 
Germany, Spain, and England. The German 
challenging club is the Norddeutscher Regatta 
Verein, and the English club the Island Sail¬ 
ing Club, Cowes. The English challenger will 
be designed by Mr. Linton Hope. 
B. Heckstall Smith. 
Messrs. Maconnell & Cook have sold the fol¬ 
lowing yachts: The raceabout Fire Fly, owned 
more, of Fishkill Landing, to Mr. Fred Grirnpe, 
Norfolk, Va. Fire Fly was formerly owned by 
Mr. G. P. Granberry and won the championship 
of Long Island Sound two consecutive years. 
The auxiliary yawl Gladys, Mr. L. H. Whitte- 
by Mr. M. B. Pendas, to Mr. E. L. Woodard, of 
of New London. 
23 
SCHOONER YACHT QUEEN. 
Designed and built by the Ilerreshoff Mfg. Co., Bristol, R. I., for J. Rogers Maxwell, Esq. 
Photo by James Burton. 
Boston Letter. 
“ ‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, 
‘To talk of many things,’ ” 
Of sonder boats and rating rules, 
Of Kaisers and of scantlings. 
But first an apoplectic word of apology! It 
may have been due to earless writing on 
my part, or the fault of the printer, but my 
last letter as published contained an aggravat¬ 
ing mistake. I have reference to the state¬ 
ment concerning the relative speeds of the Davy 
Jones, when using first one and then both of 
her engines. What I think I wrote was, “Using 
both engines, thus doubling the power, she 
would develop a speed of only 1.1 knots ad¬ 
ditional. Yet according to all known formulae, 
etc., she should have obtained an increase of 
two knots.” 
The situation in respect to the sonderklasse 
remains chaotic; in regard to a race at Kiel 
in 1907, the situation is critical. The Eastern 
Y. C. has cabled the Kaiserlicher Y. C. that 
it has found it impossible to be at Kiel with 
representative boats and crews earlier than 
August. This is tantamount to a polite but 
firm declaration that there will be no race at 
all unless the Germans abandon the idea of 
holding it during Kiel week and consent to a 
match in August. And this is certainly little 
enough for us to insist upon. Throughout the 
entire negotiations and match last year the 
Eastern Y. C. went more than half way to 
meet the Germans’ conditions, requirements and 
limitations. It is impossible for Americans to 
try out and select their challengers in time to 
send them to Germany early enough to pre¬ 
pare for a match beginning June 17. Our 
spring weather is often admirable for sailing,- 
but boats that would be at their best in April 
w r ould not be among the leaders in July and 
August. Spring breezes have more weight than 
summer winds. 
Last season the conditions of the match were 
announced in mid-February, and while the prep¬ 
arations went forward with an unprecedented 
rush, the last of the seventeen boats was barely 
completed by July 15. A race in Kiel week 
