19th Hole: The Readers Take Over

AMERICA'S CUP: ALL HAIL
Sirs:
Hail Columbia!

And a hearty hail to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED for keeping interested landlocked sailors (there are many) informed of happenings in the America's Cup trials. The coverage has been comprehensible to Corinthian sailors.
PIERCE CASSEDY
Shelby, N.C.

AMERICA'S CUP: SELECTION SEPTET
Sirs:
Here is how the editorial cartoonist of The Providence Evening Bulletin recorded Columbia's selection as cup defender (see below). Pretty good portraits of the selection committee, at that.
ROGER SMITH
Providence

?For the committee's Sporting Look see page 28.—ED.

AMERICA'S CUP: GENIAL FELLOW
Sirs:
The picture of Frank Paine (19TH HOLE, Sept. 22) reminded me of the time I tried (without success) to go for a sail on Yankee one Sunday in Newport back in 1934. There being no wind whatsoever, the late Messrs. Paine and Charles Francis Adams decided to remain at anchor. They put me overboard in a diver's helmet to inspect Yankee's underbody.

With Paine pumping air into a makeshift shoulder-weighted regulation helmet, I descended several times to the bottom of Newport Harbor, where I gazed in awe at Yankee's huge bronze hull. On my last trip down, my headpiece became engulfed with water. I had to slip out of the contraption in a hurry and rise quickly to the surface on my own.

Gasping for breath, I perceived Frank Paine in stitches of laughter. A most genial fellow with a keen sense of humor, he claimed that the air-pump handle had inadvertently "broken" just as he had become tired from "pumping the damn thing anyway!"
JOHN C. RICE JR.
Manchester, Mass.

AMERICA'S CUP: ARTIST AS PROPHET
Sirs:
One picture in your Sept. 15 issue was worth a year's subscription price to me. On pages 20-21, showing an artist's conception of the America's Cup racecourse, is a boat I am much interested in. But the curious thing is, this boat has never been in eastern waters.

The ketch shown just off Point Judith is undoubtedly a Newporter. One cannot mistake the combination of clipper bow, deckhouse, dinghy hung on stern davits and, above all, the Newporter monkey rail. There are now 63 of these famous Newporters on the West Coast, two on the Great Lakes and one in Florida.
FRED O. PAIGE
Philadelphia

?The Newporter, previewed in our Nov. 5, 1956 issue as the first production-line, fiber-glass-covered ocean sailer, has since made an outstanding name for itself on the West Coast. Artist Joe Kaufman, not a Californian, has never seen one but, like cartographers of old and their sea monsters, drew in a Newporter for its decorative accent.—ED.