584 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 15, 19x1. 
The challenger will be selected from the boats 
now building for the defense of the British In¬ 
ternational cup for motor boats, and should the 
race for the Gold cup be held earlier than the 
international event, it will help to tune the de¬ 
fender for the big race. The eliminating trials 
are to begin on Aug. 12 and the international 
races will begin on Aug. 24. 
The Motor Boat Club will have a houseboat 
for its headquarters this year as usual. A com¬ 
mittee has been appointed to select the boat, 
which will be moored in Huntington Harbor. 
Maple Leaf’s Fast Time. 
The first race at Monaco last week was won 
by E. MacKay Edgar's new speed boat Maple 
Leaf HE In a rough sea she skimmed around 
a course at the rate of 47 nautical miles an hour. 
She started again the second day in the Omnium 
race, but lost her rudder and damaged her pro¬ 
peller. Maple Leaf III. is a hydroplane built 
to try to win the British International trophy 
for motor boats now held by the Motor Boat 
Club of America. She is just under 40 feet in 
length and is driven by two motors of 350-horse¬ 
power each. In a trial on the Thames two 
weeks ago she showed 49.5 nautical or 57 statute 
miles an hour. While the speed was regarded 
as phenomenal for a boat of her size, it did not 
create alarm among those interested in the de¬ 
fenders. Many boats can go very fast for short 
distances, but fail to^ hold their speed over a 
course of 20 or 30 miles. 4 he trials are made 
over measured miles, three with and three 
against the tide. Those who heard of the trial 
ramarked. "Wait until she races.” 
The course at Monaco is one of the hardest 
for motor boats. It is generally rough or 
choppy there, so that a speed of 47 miles in a 
rough sea is even better than the trial. This is 
at the rate of 54 statute miles an hour. 
Work at Luder’s Yard. 
Several interesting motor craft are nearing 
completion at the yard of the Luder s Marine 
Construction Company at Portchester. The 60- 
foot cabin cruiser Ivathmar II. for Robert T. 
Fowler is to be launched in a few days. This 
boat is equipped with a 65-horsepower motor 
and is expected to make 13 miles an hour. Sea¬ 
worthiness and comfort were wanted by the 
owner. The quarters are arranged to accommo¬ 
date five persons besides a crew of two. The 
boat is of the raised deck type forward, with a 
bridge between this deck and the trunk cabin 
and with a smokestack, military mast, plumb 
flaring bow and lean whaleboat stern and is a 
model exponent of a smart seaworthy cruiser. 
John H. Flagler's 106-footer is also to be 
launched within a few days. This is a two- 
funnel, schooner-rigged, clipper-bow boat to de¬ 
velop 16 miles an hour with a 300-horsepower 
Standard engine. 
There is under way a 32-foot fast runabout 
building for Albert Chesebrough, of Northport, 
L. I. This boat, equipped with a ioo-horse- 
power Sterling engine, is to make 30 miles an 
hour and will be raced extensively this summer 
in special classes. 
A 32-foot cabin tender of stock model is 
being built for Johnson de Forest, of New York 
city, for use as a tender to Mr. de Forest’s New 
York thirty. A speed of 9miles an hour will 
be obtained with a 20-horsepower Bridgeport 
motor. This boat in her lines is somewhat of a 
reversion to old-fashioned standards. The boat 
is being built with- a sharp dead rise transom 
with an easy floor running down to a deep keel 
with reverse or S framing. The amidship sec¬ 
tion is to show considerable dead rise ana the 
plumb bow will have considerable flare. The 
house is to be of the coach or hunting cabin 
type. . , . , 
A 24-foot launch, Otter, is being constructed 
for James H. Hayden, of Washington, D. C.. 
which will be used at the summer home of the 
owner at Lake George. 
A 40-foot runabout for Dr. Edwin Lodge, of 
Detroit, is also under way. This boat, 6 feet 
wide, is of solid mahogany and quartered oak 
finish and is to be powered with a 60-horse¬ 
power Jencick motor and is to have a speed of 
19 miles an hour. This craft is to be used as a 
ferryboat between the owner’s home on Lake 
St. Claire and Detroit. 
The Fitting Out Season. 
Concluded from page 546. 
The fuel tank was a frightful trouble. Some¬ 
how—probably through the attentions of evil- 
minded urchins who infest that shore, to the 
detriment of boat covers (which they , use as 
hammocks) and nicely painted hulls (which they 
find useful for stone-throwing. contests), the 
fuel tank was at least a quarter full of sand and 
mud. This discovery, quite accidental, by the 
way, as we were prepared to take the cleanli¬ 
ness of the fuel tank on trust, explained the 
continual misbehavior of the engine the pre¬ 
ceding season. There was no proper hand hole 
on the tank, nothing but the outlet and the 
filling plug on top. It was cleaned out at last 
by rigging the garden hose on to it and wash¬ 
ing it out that way. Then it was washed out 
with plenty of petrol and replaced—with a hasp 
and padlock over the filling plug projecting 
above the fore deck. The petrol pipe was also 
carefully washed through with petrol as a 
necessary precaution. The carburetter—the 
common Lunkenheimer type with a heavy 
valve inside—was cleaned and repacked round 
the regulator spindles after the valve had been 
very carefully ground in a little. I hen the fuel 
system was reinstalled and connected up. 
’ The ignition had, very properly, been left to 
the last. The coil had to be sent to the makers 
to be overhauled; the bill it returned with 
showed that those small motor boat owners 
who remove coil and batteries front their boats 
after a trip is finished, act very wisely indeed, 
and effect serious economy by their carefulness. 
The battery was in such a frightful state it had 
to be discarded. The boat was rewired 
throughout with single 16-gauge, heavily in¬ 
sulated. house wire, run in compo. tubes. 
Wherever a wire left a tube the end of the pipe 
was bent downward to allow water or moisture 
to drip off. It would have been better to have 
put in a proper “conduit” system, really, but the 
makeshift used proved quite satisfactory. A 
special box was made to hold coil and battery; 
the sides projected some three inches below the 
bottom of the box, and the switch was placed 
on the underside of the bottom, through which 
all the -wires led to spark plug, to “earth,” and 
to the engine contact maker. This way the 
switch was protected in a very simple manner 
from wet, and any moisture on the outside of 
the box would collect at the bottoms of the 
sides and drop off without doing any harm. 
The wooden cover was made a tight fit to the 
inside of the box with a rubber grummet, and 
the edges of the cover also turned down so 
that the joint was protected. Any ventilation 
that might be necessary inside the box could 
come through the holes where the compo. pipes 
containing the wires passed through the bot¬ 
tom. 
The contact maker was carefully cleaned and 
readjusted. As nasty accidents can occur when 
starting up after replacing a contact maker, the 
time of occurrence of the spark was carefully 
tested. The spark advance lever was placed in 
mid position (which struck us as about right), 
the plug removed and laid on some metal part. 
A wooden rod, inserted through the plug hole 
and resting on the top of the piston, allowed 
one to see that exact part of the piston stroke 
when the spark started to pass. It is not so 
easy to make a mistake in this connection with 
a two-cycle engine as it is with a four-cycle 
engine where the contact maker is generally 
gear-driven. The gears are marked with punch 
dots which should coincide when the gears are 
re-meshed. A back fire is never pleasant, and 
can be really dangerous. Magneto ignition 
wants care in reassembling, too. In fact, no 
two parts should be taken apart without the 
proper relative positions to each other having 
been marked. Every engine maker puts sucti 
marks in necessary spots, as a matter of fact, 
but they should be looked for and found. An¬ 
other point to be observed in taking down an 
engine is to put all nuts, bolts, screws, and small 
oddments generally connected with some par¬ 
ticular part of the engine, together. It may 
happen that when an engine has been almost 
completely built up again that screws or bolts 
of the wrong length have been used somewhere, 
and those about to be put in place are too short. 
A little misjudgment of this kind cost hours 
in the fitting out of the boat which forms the 
subject of this contribution. 
Cine of the most important things in fitting 
up the parts is to insure that all nuts and set 
screws are properly tightened. This is abso¬ 
lutely vital on moving parts, and cannot be too 
carefully looked to. If, for instance, the big 
end of the connecting rod comes adrift while 
the engine is running (and it could not well do 
so when the engine is shut down) it will cer¬ 
tainly mean a most unholy smash-up. In ad¬ 
justing bearing surfaces like this the nuts hold¬ 
ing the brasses down should first of all be 
screwed up firmly, finger tight, then eased back 
the merest trifle. Then the lock nuts should be 
thoroughly well fastened down over the nuts 
themselves. In all cases, some preventive 
means should be adopted to prevent these 
dropping if ever they should slack off, through 
vibration, say, or carelessness. The most ef¬ 
fective means of all is to put a split pin through 
the bolt end, then the lock nut cannot slack 
more than a little, and though the engine will 
knock, perhaps, nothing can come loose within 
the crank chamber to damage things. 
The experience gained in fitting out a boat 
completely from stem to stern, as had to be 
done with the boat described, though entailing 
a deal of hard and dirty work, is no unpleasant 
job to a keen motor boatman. He will learn a 
wonderful lot in doing it, and will have, at least, 
the satisfaction of knowing that things have 
been properly done. A really careful man does 
not take much on trust even when fitting out 
has been accomplished by professional men. 
Fie likes to know for himself that everything 
is “just so,” according to his ideas and tastes. 
It is a fact beyond dispute that a man who 
looks after his own boat entirely is at a great 
advantage when his engine develops any little 
trouble. He knows exactly the cause, and ex¬ 
actly what remedy to apply. Short of actual 
breakage, he is the master of his boat, and on 
really important occasions, when caught out in 
nasty weather or when racing, for instance, he 
will find that the feeling of confidence he has 
both in his boat and his own command over 
her, is well worth the time and trouble spent in 
acquiring the necessary experience and knowl¬ 
edge which have given hint that confidence. 
A Marblehead Racer. 
J. B. Lindeman, of the Colonial Y. C., is hav¬ 
ing a 40-foot cruising motor boat built at Simp¬ 
son’s yard at the foot of West 149th street. The 
boat is almost ready for launching. She is to 
take part in the race of the Motor Boat Club 
from Huntington to Marblehead. The plans 
were drawn by Southmayd Hatch. Mr. Linde¬ 
man will name the boat Snapshot. 
The model of the yacht shows a boat of ex¬ 
ceptional seagoing qualities, with a high how, 
considerable flare and good dead rise. The en¬ 
gine controls from the bridge, with an auxiliary 
steering gear placed aft for rough weather. A 
military mast is carried for signalling purposes. 
The construction is uncommonly heavy and of 
selected oak, cedar and mahogany. The engine, 
a six-cylinder, four-cycle, 36 horsepower Von 
Blerk, turning 600 revolutions a minute, will 
drive the yacht 12 miles an hour. Gasolene is- 
carried in two separate tanks under the after 
deck, giving a cruising radius of 300 miles. 
Eight persons can be accommodated on board 
with comfort. The cabin is finished in paneled 
mahogany, plush curtains and cushions, Pullman 
berths and there is a pipe berth forward in the 
engine room for one man. Snapshot III. is 40 
feet over all, 10 feet beam and draws 3 feet 6 
inches. She will be used for cruising in the 
summer on the Hudson River and Long Island 
Sound and for fishing and hunting in the South 
during the winter. 
