Triumphant Freak

To Marblehead, Mass. last week went a freak. High boomed she was, and with a prodigious spinnaker. U. S. yachtsmen, eyeing her sagely, restrained titters. Her owner and skipper, Capt. Eric Lundberg, a portly Swede, smiled obscurely. All this was before the races.

In the first race the outlandish Swedish knockabout Bachante, gathered her big spinnaker full of wind and kited away from the German yacht Kickerle, and the U. S. Tipler III, to win with a record margin of over 21 min. U. S. yachtsmen looked puzzled, German yachtsmen muttered grave gutturals. In the second and third races, Bachante readily repeated her first victory, thus cinching the Corinthian Yacht Club cup and the Marblehead trophy. Said a U. S. yachtsman wistfully: "We are glad that the Swedes won the big cup, but we are more grateful for what they have shown us in the way of new sails and rigs."

German and U. S. skippers still had a wan hope of nosing out the lone Swedish entry in the three free-for-all races for the Chandler Hovey and Williams trophies. Three German, five U. S. yachts were entered. But the tedious Bachante won every race. Four silver cups were handed over to the round-faced, debonair Capt. Lundberg. Benignly he in turn presented a cup to the skipper of the German Hathi, runner-up in the free-for-all event.

Never before did a foreign yacht win all its races in U. S. waters. U. S. yachtsmen consoled themselves with the fact that the 30-square meter specifications required in this regatta, long common in Germany and Sweden, have rarely been met by U. S. designers before this year.