TOPICS of the DAY

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 259, 9 November 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

TOPICS of the DAY

(Prom Our Special Correspondent.)

LONDON, September 27. UPTON'S TEAS-E-BAD FOR

THE CONSTITUTION

DRIFT AND DRIVEL.

The popular perversion of the old saw "There's many a slip 'twixt the Cap' and the Lip-ton" seems likely one more to be verified. In truth, our Cup is full to overflowing', a\thoiiffh we have been draining it to the dregs daily for the last month. Yesterday one tried hard to pump up a little enthusiasm, and to work himself up into a patriotic frenzy in the hope that the tea-chests of Boston in 1773 would be avenged by the teayacht of 1901, that the memory of Washing-ton would be wiped out by that of Lip-ton. Ton-nage has been much before our eyes of late, and yesterday after we had been sated with the'minutest details of the competing boats from the spinnaker to the lee scuppers, we dismissed nil these technical details, and looked forward to a simple, straight-forward narrative of the race. London held itself in readiness for news of a decisive British victory. The glad announcement was made that if Lipton won the Cup all his employees were to have a whole holiday. One enterprising journal, failing to induce the competing yachts to fit themselves up with the Marconi wireless telegraph instruments, tapped the Atlantic cable, and, informed by other scudding scouts by wireless telegraphy of the progress of the race, wired to the metropolis every tack and every roll of both boats. Red and green stars on the shot tower by the Thames, red and green steamboats on the river, red and green bombs from the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, kept the waiting crowd, decked out with green ribbons and shamrock badges informed of the relative positions of the two rivals. When it was announced that the Columbia was leading by a couple of miles the bombs began to fall very flat. Enthusiasm gave way to disgust when "no race" was signalled, and people prepared themselves for a repetition of the series of fiascoes of last year.

There is for many of us who are not expert yachtsmen, but who love the sea and boats for all that, a feeling of unreality about the race. A good honest tussle between two seaworthy craft over the Atlantic one could look forward to, but the fiddling nnd 'finnicking" of two skimming dishes on ,-a course where nine times out of ten the winds are faint and fickle is rather apt to keep the spectators, like the boats, in the doldrums. To the man on land, too, there seems too much slim practice, and too little sport about it. To him the whole history of yacht-building and yachtracing is one of evasion of rules and regulations, and he hardly appreciates the attempts of the designers to get to windward of each other by what seems to him a bit of trickery, rather than of skill, or the continued endeavours of the rival skippers to jockey each other and to blanket the other boat. And when he ,dpan&.his paper the morning "after" the race, and finds columns <of cables despatched at intervals of five minutes, every puff of wind having its puff of piffle, and seeks to fish up the few main facts from an ocean of drivelling details, something of this nature: — 11.45 a.m. The sea is rough, but the course is clear. Many excursionists are being sea-sick. 11.50 a.m. Shamrock is reaching—so are the excursionists. Noon. The sun is shining. Shamrock is drifting better than Columbia. 12.5. Shamrock is on the starboard tack. 12.5 i. Columbia is on the port tack* 12.10. The race is very slow. The excursionists are on hard tack.—Well he feels fairly "fed up" with yaoht racing.