1937 President's Cup
Committee Sets Regatta Times
By Daniel F. Craig
The President's Cup Regatta committee has announced the time schedule and courses for the sailing events, which will see 200 of the country's best small-boat skippers vying for honors of Hains Point Saturday and Sunday.
A distinguished race committee, which reads like the Who's Who of yachting, will be aboard the Coast Guard cutter anchored on the course.
Heading the list is Herbert L. Stone, editor of Yachting, and others are William Crosby, editor of Rudder and designer of the popular Snipe one-design class; Rear Admiral C.R. T. Lowndes, Capt. Archer M.R. Allen, United States Navy; Dr. John Eiman, president of the Comet Class Racing Association, and from the ranks of local yachtsmen have been recruited Adrian Sizer, race committee chairman of the Potomac River Sailing Association; Paul G. Tomalin, handicapper and recorder and R.P. DuMont, assistant handicapper and timer.
(Reprinted from the Washington Post, Thursday, Sept. 16, 1937)
(ED. NOTE -- In those days, the first weekend of the President's Cup Regatta was devoted to sailing boats -- which drew crowds estimated at 35,000 over the first weekend -- while the outboards and inboards came out the following Friday-Saturday-Sunday. In between, in this particular year, there was conducted a 500-mile New York to Washington power boat cruiser race, from Gravesend Yacht Club in Brooklyn, via Atlantic City, Chesapeake City, Md., and Solomons Island, Md., and on into Washington, D.C. The race began Monday and ended Wednesday. Upon their arrival, the contestants were interviewed by noted radio broadcaster Arch MacDonald and the famed ex-Washington Senator star Walter "Big Train" Johnson at the Corinthian Yacht Club. The winning boat was the Miss New Jersey, smallest of the three that tried the treacherous run down the coast, with Ralph Harcourt at the helm. The veteran blue-waterman, of the Atlantic City Tuna Club, maintained an average speed of 12 miles an hour for the entire 500 miles aboard his 26-foot cruiser, although buffeted by curling seas that smashed a heavy plate glass window in her pilothouse off notorious Brigantine Shoal near Atlantic City Monday night. Miss Maryland and Miss New York were the other two entries.)