The Costliest of Sports.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 7, 16 February 1910, Page 42

The Costliest of Sports.

By

ARTHUR F. ALDRIDGE.

THE ENORMOUS SUMS SPENT YEARLY IN YACHTING —WHY A FIRST-RATE STEAM YACHT COSTS AS MUCH AS TWENTY. THOUSAND POUNDS IN A SEASON, AND A CUP CHALLENGER ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS OR MORE.

TORED away in the strong room of the New York Yaeht Club J is a piece of silver that is not artistic, not old enough to have any value as an artique, and not worth more than £100; yet for this comparatively insignificant piece of silver, the famous America’s cup, thousands of pounds have been spent by yachtsmen of America and England. Yachting is the most expensive sport in the world. It costs more to win a mug offered for a yacht race than to carry oil a prize offered for competition in any other sport. Yachtsmen will spend thousands of pounds, and take endless trouble, to win a £lO cup. No heavy stakes are raced for in y aching, and in this country the more successful yacht of the year will fall a long way short of winning enough to pay her (*X ponses. Should Sir 'Thomas Lipton bo successful in his next attempt for the America Cup. and carry away the much coveted trophy, he will feed well repaid, because he is a thorough sportsman. He will have nothing, personally, to recompense

him for his work, worry,, and outlay, but in the history of the America’s Cup he will live as long as the cup lasts. Should the syndicate boat succeed in keeping the cup in America the members will be formally thanked by their fellow club members, and the New York Yacht Club will probably have a handsome piece of silver suitably engraved to commemorate the event. THE GROWTH OF LAVISH EXPENSE. In the early days of yacht racing, owning and running a yacht was not such an expensive affair. Up to the time when the Thistle came across the Atlantic, in 1887, it is doubtful if the total cost to one side had reached £lO,OOO. Since then, money has been spent more and more lavishly. Expensive metals have been used in the construction of the yachts; big crews have been engaged to handle them tugs have been engaged to handle them; tugs have place to another; a steamer has been hired for the crews to live on, because the yachts are racing tu-x-

ehines pure and simple; hollow steel spars have been constructed, at great ®ost, in order to lighten their equipment; their sails have been made of the most expensive duck that could fce procured, and a hundred-and-oue things have been done that were never thought of 25 years ago. All this has mad : the sport the most costly in the world. The extravagance has not been confined to the international races. Men

with plenty of money have made the racing in the smaller classes just as costly in proportion, so that yachting is justly termed, nowadays, ‘’the millionaires’ sport.” One unfamiliar with the conditions may wonder where so much money can go to in such a short season, for yaeht racing begins on Decoration Day and is practically over by the middle of September. The American cup defender will cost about £30,000 to build. For that sum she will be put in the water and made ready for sailing. She will be manned by a crew of 50 professional sailors. The captain’s salary will be about £500; the two mates will get probably £2OO each, the boatswain £8 a month, and the quartermaster the

same, while each of the seamen will receive £(> monthly. The crew will be engaged for at least five months, so that the total cost for wages will l>e about £2400. These men have to be (Jed, and fed well, too, to get good work out of them in the races. It is estimated that 3/2 a day for each man will furnish the food. This for five months will amount to nearly £I2OO. It will require two cooks and two stewards to prepare the food, and their wages and keeping will cost £3OO more. Each member of the crew has to have one suit of blue serge and three of white

duck, besides sweaters and caps on whidi are the name of the yacht, boots, rubbers, oilskins, and various other things, costing in all about £BOO for the 50 men. All told, the cost of the crew fop the five months will be a little under £4BOO.

A cup defender is built only for tha purpose of keeping the America’s Cup in the country, and boats of this class have no accommodations for the crevyi

or for the owner. The lower deck, which on most yachts is fitted up as staterooms and cabins, is almost bare. Tha men and the stores are carried on & tender, hired for the occasion; and oil the upper deek of this vessel there aro suitable accommodations for the owner, and his friends. A vessel large enough, to have such a company on board, as well as all the yacht’s spare spars, sails, and extra rigging, is chartered for the season at a cost of about £3O a day, or. £4400 for the five months. A tug, which is needed to take the yacht out to the starting line and tow. her baek after the race, and for many other purposes, costs £ls .a day. The tug is not wanted all the season, bu-t she will be in constant requisition for as much as

a month or six weeks, so that it will take about £sllO to cover this expense. THE CARE THAT A YACHT NEEDS. The keeping of the yacht in proper! trim is a heavy drain. The hull has toi lie constantly painted, especially if it is white. The spai must have constant! scraping and varnishing. For on a defender or challenger, three or four suit® of sails are necessary to get through tho season. A sail will soon be stretched out of shape by the wear it gets on on* of these racing yachts, and another one must be ready to take its place at aujj

moment. Perhaps a sail will not fit io the liking of those on board. It is at cnee discarded, and a new one put in its place. It is very little use trying to make a poorly cut sail fit' by tinkering jvith it.

A mainsail costs about £2OO, and a whole suit five times as much. Extra jibs, staysails, club topsails, and working topsails are necessary, and there are always spare balloon jib topsails and spinnakers ready in case of an accident. In one of her cup races the Valkyrie lost two spinnakers in one race. This •will show the importance of having spare sails on hand. An extra set of spars is also requisite, and now that they are making them of steel, and hollow, so as to save as much weight as possible, this is another considerable expense. The Columbia, lost her mast' in a race off Newport ; the Shamrock broke a steel gaff While sailing off Sandy Hook, and broke a topmast in one of the cup races of 1899. • ■

There is another heavy expense attached to a first-class racing yacht—the cost of hauling out to clean. These big boats have to be put into the dry dock, and the fee is £6O a day. While in the dock, men are put to work scouring the underbody,' and when it has been made perfectly clean, electric burnishers are run over it to make it as smooth as glass.

A YACHTSMAN’S PERSONAL EXPENSES.

All this expense has been for the yacht and keeping it in proper racing trim. IThe owner’s personal expenses must be added, and the chief of these is the entertaining, the cost of which cannot be estimated with any precision. In 1899 Sir Thomas Lipton probably entertained »s lavishly as any yachtsman ever did.

During the laces, he had a party of friends every day, and sometimes as many as a hundred and fifty people were on board. The Erin is a big boat, and has ample accommodations for entertaining a large party, but its resources were so heavily taxed that a New York caterer went down every morning to supply the comforts of the owner and his guests.

The Erin is one of the handsomest yacht's afloat. The rooms on board are large and well furnished. Each stateroom has about eleven feet head room, and, instead of the old-fashioned bunk that every one associates with life alloat, each room is furnished with a big brass bedstead. The floors are riehly carpeted, and connected with each room is a private bathroom. The dining saloon is handsomely finished in paneled mahogany. On the drawing-room the walls arc coverled with silk tapestries, bric-a-brac is arranged on cabinets and tables—this, of course, only when the yaeht is at anchor —and fine paintings hang on the wa'is. On the main deck there is a large lull which is used as a music room. Electric fans, steam heat, electric lights, and refrigerating and distilling plants all make life worth living on board this floating ipalace.

The cast to a challenger for the cup is much greater than to the defender. Jl'he former is compelled to cross the ocean, and his boat is in commission at least two months longer in consequence. Sail makers are brought across the Atlantic to recut the sails, and to make new ones when necessary. Mors extra spars are needed, so that the yacht will not be badly handicapped in case of Bceident. Dozens of bales of supplies are bent on ahead of the boat. When she

arrives on this side, she has to be fit fed out for racing and got into the best possible trim. Tenders, tugs, barges, and

launches are chartered, and then, after her practice spins, there is the final overhauling to be done before the cup races are sailed. Two years ago.

including the purchase of the Erin, and his entertaining on board of her. Sir Thomas Lipton spent not much less than £200,000.

Recently four members of the New York Yacht Club agreed to build yachts of the same dimensions and model, and

to race together during the season. These were Vice-Commodore August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt, W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., and Harry Payne Whitney. The yachts were built by Herreshoff, and were what are called seventy footers, measuring a little short of seventy feet

en the water line. Each boat cost £5200 to build and equip. Mr Belmont and Mr Cornelius Vanderbilt sent to England to

get their skippers aml -crews for their boats, because the few racing men in

American waters were already engaged. Mr W. K. Vanderbilt had a crew of Americans, and handled his boat himself in the races. Mr Whitney induced Herman Duryea, one of the best amateurs,

to take an interest in his yacht, and Mr Duryea acted as skipjier. with a crew -of American sailors. The two English skippers got about L’4oo for their work. Each yacht carried a crew of nineteen men, so that the cost o.f running the boats was about £l2OO apiece for the season of four months. Commodore Bel mont and Mr Cornelius Vanderbilt each had a £3600 steamer built to act as tender for their yachts. These boats could steam about twenty miles an hoar, and they were very costly, because of Ua' amount of coal that such speedy craft burn. Their owners used them to get ashore quickly after the races, leaving the sailing yachts to make their way into harbour with the aid of the wind. The other two yachtsmen chartered small lug boats for use as tenders. These seventy footers were raced extensively throughout the season. In order to give their crews an incentive to work heartily in a contest, racing yae it.s•men generally oiler prize money. Ea<4i man gets 25/ if the yacht wins, and half that if it loses, so that the prize nio.iey on Commodore Belmont's yaeht. the Mineola, which started thirty-three times and won sixteen races, amounted to a considerable sum. For all their outlay the only recompense to the owners was a few silver cups, and, perhaps, a little glory. THE COST OF SMALLER YACHTS. A class of yachts that has furnished most interesting sport in the waters around New York and Boston for two years is known among yachtsmen the

twenty-one foot raceabout class. the name implies, the boats are only twenty - one feet long on the water line and they are for racing pure and simple. They have open cockpits, ami arc g > >d only for an afternoon's sail in tine weather, if a squall comes up, those on bond must

grin ami bear hie discomfort, for their is no cabin in which to take shelter, L'hesd boats cost from £340 to £5OO ca<4i, tsome builders charging more than others for their work. They spread six hundred square feet of canvas, and a suit costs £2O. To keep them in the finest possible trim for racing, three suits are used in a season. One professional is allowed on each boat, and. a» he does all sorts of work, he receives perhaps £7 a month, with 3/3 a day for his food. To keep one of these small

racers in condition, it is necessary to haul the* boat out at least once in two

weeks; some yachtsmen haul out every week. The cost of taking the boat out of the water and cleaning it is £3; and while out, the hull is usualy painted or varnished, making the bill £ 1 or £2

more. The expense of maintaining one of these racing machines for a season, hi addition to the first cost of the boat, is usually from £l5O to £2OO.

A sloop iof the thirty foot class costs about £7OO, and a suit of sails for one of these boats is worth £5O, A forty-threo-foot boat, another popular size, costs about £240, while one of the fifty-two-foot class, which is only forty six feet long ou the water line,

is worth £340. Several yachtsmen have recently imported English-built yachts belonging to what is known as the sixty-foot class. They cost, to build, from £4,400 to £4,800 each. As their racing days are over for British contests, they have been sold to American yachtsmen for about half the original cost. THE GREAT COST OF STEAM YACHTS.

So much for the cost of racing: and it is no less expensive to watch the sport from the deck of <cnae big steam yacht. There are several of these craft

that have cost their owners nearly ’ £2,009 to build, and the yearly cost of maintenance runs close to £20,000. The largest steamer built for private pleasure is W. K. Vanderbilt’s Valiant. She is three hundred and thirty-two feet long, and it takes a crew of sixty men to handle her. Her captain gets a salary of £5OO a year, and her navigator probably draws a similar sum. The chief engineer's pay is £3OO. Coal is a big item on the Valiant, and as she is in commission nine months each year, she burns thousands of tons. Oil, paint, varnish, tools, lamps, rope cables, and hundreds of other things that are as necessary on a yacht as on an ocean steamer, make another big expense each year. The engines and boilers have to be examined and repaired, and once in four or five years the boilers have to be renewed. New uniforms for the men are needed twice a year, at about £5 a man, if the yacht is to be kept up properly. The Valiant is one of th® most perfectly appointed and most elaborately decorated yachts afloat. Rich

carvings, stained glass domes, tapestries, rugs, and costly ornaments, abound everywhere. A chef presides over -the galley, and he has a staff of expert assistants. Eaeh guest has a suite of apartments for his own use, and there are quarters for valets and rooms for maids.

Another fine yacht is the Margarita, recently built from designs by George L. Watson, for Anthony J. Drexel, of Philadelphia. This boat is perhaps a little more up-to-date than the Valiant, and is as luxuriously furnished as a floating palace can be. French, Italian, and English artists decorated the

yacht throughout, and it is said that the cost of the vessel was about £200,000. The Margarita has not been in American waters yet, but those who have seen her abroad say that she' is a marvel of beauty and luxury. A fine American built yacht is Howard Goulds Niagara, which was constructed largely from her owner’s own designs. Mr. Gould is an enthusiastic amateur photographer, and one of her conveniences is a perfectly equipped dark room, where he develops the pictures he makes during his voyages about the world. It costs £25.000 a year to keep the Niagara in commission.

Pierpont Morgan's steamer Corsair is another large yacht which carries a crew of more than 40 men. She is a fast boat, too, and the faster the yacht the more she costs for coal and supplies. The Corsair is one of the handsomest vessels in these waters. Of the best known schooners, Commodore Lewis Cass Ledyard, of the New York Yacht Club, has the fastest in tho Corona. Originally built as a cup de-

fender, the Corona is a handsome craft, and has very comfortbale accommodations. Another famous two-master is the Sachem, the flagship of the Larchmont Yacht Club, owned by Commodore Frederick T. Adams. The Sachem is speedy—* she has won two Goelet Cups—ajid finely equipped as well. Among the treasures on board are the engineer’s gong from the ill-fated Maine, the tell-tale compass from the wrecked Kearsarge—predecessor of the present battleship of that name—a shell from one of the Spanish cruisers which has been turned into a boat hook handle, and many other relies which are both interesting and valuable.

The depreciation of the value of yaehts is one of the economic factors of the sport. A racing yacht in its second season is worth only half what it cost, and a cruising yacht depreciates 25 per cent. After this, it may be estimated that, for sale purposes,the value of a steamer declines five per cent a year, that of sailing craft 10 per cent. Yachts have to pay a premium of two to three per cent a year for insurance. The fee for laying up in any basin is 15 cents a foot a month, figured on the over all length. Sails, spars, and rigging are stored in houses, and the charges are according to the amount of space occupied. To fit out a yacht for the season takes from three to four weeks, and the average expense is about one-tenth of the original cost of the vessel.