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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (May 11, 1913)
THE SUNDAY ORECxO'S'IAN. PORTLAND. MAY 11, 1913. PLY Portland "Skbndish" Days Have Passed and Real Yachts Sail Up and Down the River One Real Challenger Will Co After High Yachting Honors. TIE establishment of Portland as the home of the speediest sailing; craft on the Pacific Coast and the center of yachting In the Pacific Northwest Is the ambition of Portland Tachting enthusiasts In general and of Oregon Tacht Club In particular. Tuning the season Just opening; en thusiasts hop to attract attention to Portland and ' the unexcelled racing; possibilities of the feolumbla and "Wil lamette Rivers. Then will come ISIS, with the Fanojna-Paclfic International Exposition,-, with its series of sailing; contests excelling anything; ever pre sented on the Pacific. In these races. Involving the speed chalmplons of a dosen nations and bringing to the wa ters of the Pacific Coast thousands of yachtsmen of this and other coun tries. Oregonians see the opportunity to elevate the state and Its waters to a prominent position In the sailing; world. Fot several' years Portland has oo . "copied an enviable position In motor boating;, due to the sensational per formances of - the Oregon Wolf, de signed and piloted by J. E. 'Wolff. A few of the Eastern owners of speed boats have scoffed at the Idea of a product of the Pacific Northwest tear ing; over the water at a rate of more than 42 miles an hour, but every In vasion has resulted disastrously and should the recent ISOOO challenge be accepted and one of the Baby Reliance motorboats, champions of the world, appear at 'Astoria this Summer. It Is not unlikely that Portland will be ad vertised far and wide as a city boast ing; of the . fastest motorboat in the world. Yachtsmen have watched the growth of motorboatlng with pride, but also with a little envy. They have dreamed of dotting; the Willamette and Colum bia with a fleet of fast sailers, with annual races In their waters between craft representing; Seattle, British Columbia and California, but It has been little more than a dream. But this year they believe that In the Grayling, Captain H. F. Todd's new j mi 1miiI they fcave the entering m olj.ii thn craft which win draw the attention of Pacific Coast "yachtdom" to Portland and provide the necessary Impetus to' the movement to establish the e ""ff - pleasure " craft on a firm foundation In this section. Captain Todd, veteran yachtsman and m. member of the Oregon Tacht Club, ; Intends to challenge the famous racing; I sloop Genevieve, of Everett. Wash. This 'loop bears the reputation of being; the I fastest in Puget Sound waters, and ' there arc not more than two or three 'boats on ths Pacific Coast her equal 'la speed. , . "5 The Grayling;, which Is being; placed la commission at the Oregon Tacht I Club quarters , on the Willamette, is the latest sloop built after lars of ' development In the production of the I centerboard type of racing; boats for . local waters. She was constructed ! from designs by Gus Amundsen of White Bear. Minn, the home of the j fastest race boats of -this type In Amer- If these boats race, and there is very prospect that they will, and In a series of competitions to decide the question of supremacy In the North west, the curloua. spectaclo of a con test between craft, of widely divergent types will be presented. The Genevieve Is a 60-feot sloop with a deep draft keel and outside balance, while the Grayling; is of the old eklm dlsh type of boat, with centerboard and ' blunt ends. The Genevieve Is built for heavy weather and choppy seas en countered cn the Sound, while the Grayling Is designed to traverse the smooth waters of the Columbia and Willamette. The centerboard design Is pre-eminently a Portland feature of Pacific Coast sailing. This is the result of the racing conditions. This type of craft shows to poor advantage in choppy seas but - is at home in the comparative smooth river waters. The deep draft keel with the outside bal ance makes the Genevieve and her sisters best in rough waters. Despite the apparent superiority of the Genevieve over a shallow sloop of the Grayling type. Captain Todd, who bas sailed on the waters of every sec tion of North America. Is willing and eager to pit his 28-foot champion against the Everett speeder. What would a victory over the Gene vieve mean? Only this: The boat that beats the . il . : m3ez . ..... ....... .. - ? V """ ,J" '"V"'' -t.' r.X-fM. iZv" ' ? '. &&ZZZsT- ' VA M ' 'l "."'I t-fLf .'4 v iri " i i i i I " .iW?::-.?:-.: ' - -.-Wj.vtS" . Genevieve wlU be the fastest craft ever produced in the Pacific Northwest, taster than the famous international racing sloops. Spirit X, Spirit II, and Alexandra. The history of these boats Is In teresting. The two Spirits were built by the Seattle Tacht Club to compete against the champions of the Royal Vancouver Tacht Club for the Duns mulr trophy. The Alexandra was built by the Vanoouverltes in 108 for a race against the Spirit L The Canadians won by a close margin and next year the Spirit II was built In an effort to wrest supremacy from the rival club. The two champions met in 190 at Victoria. B. C The Alexandra won the first day, winds favoring her. The second day the Spirit II was victor, but the Canadians declared that the win ner -vas larger than the rules per muted and refused to sail the deciding race. Bitter feeling resulted and the international contests were abandoned. Since then the Canadians have ac quired the two American craft and the three engage in frequent races, with first one and then the other win. nlng. Last year at Cowlchan the Genevieve plainly showed that she has more speed than any one of the international sloops. Consequently Captain Todd must havs wonderful confidence In the ability of his Grayling to have the temerity to challenge the Everett speeder. The Grayling, which Todd claims can make 14 miles an hour, remark able speed for sail power, was built primarily for competition against the Sparrow, the class B winner at Astoria last Summer; the Spendthrift, Fore-and-aft and other boats of the same class. But Its owner is ambitious and aspires to meet worthier foes; hence the challenge to the Genevieve. Just what Captain Todd will stipu late in his challenge Is not known, but Portland and Northwestern sail ing boat enthusiasts are assured of a series of great struggles, with the testing of the center board design to the fullest. Other boats, lust as fast, are to be built within the next yeai, looking to wards the establishment of relations with Northwestern clubs for compe titions preliminary to the big Interna tional races of the Panama-Pacific Ex position. The game has grown steadily for the past eight or 10 year, but the past promises to sink Into insignificance compared with the development within the next few years. Tachting Is becoming more popular each year, from San Diego on the south to Alaskan points on the north. The prospects of the many races in San Francisco Bay In 1916 will give It the Impetus needed to place yachting on a par with motor boating in the North west. In the South the yacht Is more prominent. One feature of the Exposition speed carnival which Is most alluring to Port land yachtsmen Is the large number of boats .which 'will seek the Coast In 1915. ' Thousands of men, from Eastern ports as well as j foreign countries, will bring their beats to the Pacific Portland being, for peculiar reasons, a point likely to greet many of them. ' All yachtsmen know that after a long sea voyage It Is essential that the hulls be rid of barnacles and sea growths, the bane of ocean cruising. Portland possesses the only body of fresh water on the Coast which Is deep enough for visiting yachts to cruise. Hence Portland promises to be the scene of notable gatherings of yachts men, who will be entertained here by the Oregon Tacht Club and Portland Motorboat Club while the fresh water Is playing havoo with the leeches. Among the big events of 1915 will be: Endurance contest. New Tork to San Diego: Seattle to San Francisco, for Seattle yachtsmen; Honolulu to San Francisco, for Hawaiian sailing men. A feature In which Portland men are par-, tlcularly Interested is one . being .-agitated for a cruise of. the pick of the Exposition material from San Francis co to. British Columbia. From 50 to 75 boats. (0 'feet or more in length, Sir Thomas Upton's Shamrock IV, Erin and new 7o-foot racing sloop, and hun dreds of boats of Eastern yacht clubs will pass through the Panama canai far a cruise on the. Pacific and a glimpse of what is expected to be the most notable exposition in msiory. And Portland, awakening to the pos sibilities of the racing sioop, and de termined to share In the glory of the grea,t regatta, should play a prominent part in the. activity of that year and achieve the ambition of Its enthusiasts, a paramount position In yachting in the Northwest. They Behave Mke Men. There Is no reason to believe that women are fundamentally more moral than men; that is to say. that they are guided by an instinct unknown to the greats body'-orVMlei't-nareless-llving -ment The vast army of self-supportlng.wd-men are more concerned with personal comfort and occasional amusement than with abstraction of any sort; and that ever augmenting army of young women of a higher class, nonmaternal, pas sionately Independent, exulting In mod ern conditions that permit their sex at least to live unyoked and unregulated without loss of prestige, and with a fair chance of success in whatever ac tive field they elect to enter, are far too Individualistic to merge themselves Into the general Idea of reform. It is In the last two classes that woman's morals will tend to become one with man's. Man, having firmly established his code, with the help of both law and society, has never had the least hesita tion in violating It himself; openly, If he Is a loose liver. Indifferent to the pleasures of social groups composed of stricter or more circumspect men and women, or If he Is young enough to be forgiven for his "wild oats" If he Is none of these things he discovers him self to the,' world accidentally. A large numberfof Tnen are too Indifferent to Women to ' venture into the zone of danger, and there .is still another class, men of stern; unyielding morality, who are the backbone of tha creedi.-u All varieties, however, unite as one-man upon the question off the conduct of the sex that gives them birth. She must be good, or $he must emigrate to the garish and definite district beyond the pale and stay there. So far, not even as a result of the modern rapid expan sion of the civilized conscience, has anything been said: about the girls sow ing their wild oats. Now, how far have women been con- troited by this law Invented by man and upheld by society? At what period of the world's history have women sheltered women been invariably chaste; what period has been without its scandals? I can recall none In the Occident save ancient Greece, where the moth ers, present and potential,, were seg regated, the heterae a triumph class by themselves, and the admiration of men was reserved Hot,. their, own phys ical perfections; or,'perhaps,V'n those long periods when all the world was at war in other- words, all able-bod-led men on the battlefield and all wom en absorbed in keeping themselves and their children alive.. Otherwise, if his tory is to be believed, the irregular relations of men and women have ever diverted society, inspired poets and ro mancers and been the mainspring of the world's tragedies, great and small There is no reason to believe that women are not innately as Immoral, or as unmoral, as men; but they have held their propensities in leash when they have through prkle, fastidious ness, fear, custom, or at the command of two forces more restraining still maternity and religion. The code in this country is still the highest In the world, but it would be Interesting, nevertheless, to sit down and recall how many weeks we could segregate in our lives in which we had not heard a bit of scandal in one set or another; how many days, in fact, when we have dwelt in cities at the height of the season. The hope for ua is, or has been, that we loudly upheld our standards, ceaselessly reiterated them; that our women, if they fell front grace, did so with the violence of the unhinged or with the utmost circum spection; and that girls whom circum stances forced to earn their own bread, monotonously and with hateful toll, preserved a haughty front or took to the streets altogether.