Remember that 1958 saw the first 12 meters built since before world war II. Now the America’s Cup is into it’s fourth event since 1937.
Tank testing has shown that the concept of a trim tab with a rudder much further aft would be a breakthrough. Other boats would add bustle, ie. additional displacement aft but S&S who carried out design modifications on ” Columbia” could not reveal what they had done in the design for “Intrepid”.
“Columbia” was capably steered by Bill Ficker, who kept her in the game until the end.
“Intrepid” would loose only once during the entire summer. She could outmanoeuvre the competition with ease. As far as I could tell most of the starts I saw, she would “sandbag” and still get to the weather mark first. It should be noted the Bus Mosbacher was helmsman and probably the finest of his generation.
“Dame Pattie” designed by Warrick Hood, might have been a worthy challenger had the defender been more like “Constellation”
With each defense came new ideas. As new information was developed, the problem was how to interpret properly that new information.
Great shots of history! Nice to see.