1926 APBA Gold Cup
Manhasset Bay, Port Washington NY, August 21, 1926

Gold Cup Entries Break Record
Fifteen Boats Entered for American Power Boat Association Championship
Eighteen Craft to Compete for Dodge Trophy
International 1½ Liter Boats and Biscayne Bay Baby Class Also to Compete

Ready for the Gold Cup Regatta Gold Cup Entries Break Record Greenwich Folly Wins Gold Cup Greenwich Folly Wins the Gold Cup A Big Fleet in the Gold Cup Race Gold Cup Class Revisited: 1926

Fifteen of the fastest boats ever built, representing a cost in excess of $200,000, are entered for the competition for the American Power Boat Association Gold Cup, to be held on Manhasset Bay, Port Washington, Long Island Sound, August 21. Not only does this represent an enormous sum of money, but the craft are the result of brain work of the country's best naval architects and boat builders for a year's time. On the day following the Gold Cup Races, the same boats together with three others, costing perhaps another $100.000 will compete for the Horace E. Dodge Memorial Trophy, over the same course. Between the several heats necessary to decide the Gold Cup and Dodge Trophy races, boats of the Biscayne Baby Class, and the International 1½ liter class will race, and on Sunday, August 22, the little outboards from all sections of the country will fight it out for national supremacy. So, from the standpoint of number of entries, quality of boats, and enormous cost of hull and power plants, the 1926 Gold Cup Regatta will be the most elaborate of any motor boat racing event ever held in America or abroad.

Out of the fifteen entries for the Gold Cup races, twelve are new craft, which have yet to finish their first race, although three of the twelve started in the 1923 race, but on account of failures of power plant, did not finish.

The Gold Cup will he decided by three 30 mile heats, the boats being awarded points in each heat, according to the number of boats defeated (see page 50) and the boat scoring the greatest aggregate number of points in the three heats being the winner. As the winner of the 1926 race will be allowed to decide where the .19.71 events will be held, and as eight organizations will be represented by racing boats, competition will be keen to have the privilege of naming the location for next year's Regatta.

Of the clubs entering boats, the newly formed Montauk Yacht Club leads with six entries. As four of six Montauk entries have been built by the Purdy Boat Company of Port Washington, and in practice spins have demonstrated speeds far in excess of anything even before obtained in the Gold Cup class since the rules were changed in 1922, permitting only displacement boats to compete, the probabilities are that next year the
races will be held on Lake Montauk, located in the new development of Carl G. Fisher
at Montauk Point, Long Island.

However, the outcome of this year's events is no certainty for the Montauk Yacht Club, as Horace E. Dodge of Detroit has four entries, representing his home town, and so it may be that the 1927 races will go back to Detroit, where they were held for so many years, until the Columbia Yacht Club with Caleb Bragg’s Baby Bootlegger took the trophy to New York in 1924.

Florida, too, this year is making a strong bid to take the races away from the North, where they have always been held since the Columbia Yacht Club first presented the trophy to the American Power Boat Association way back in 1904. Florida's entries this year include Sara De Sota, entered by Forest Adair of Sarasota, and driven by that able seaman Fred Blossom of the same city. The other entry is Palm Beach Days owned by Messrs. Wagg and Bigelow, and driven by the latter. Both of Florida's entries are fast, and have been thoroughly tried out.

The Indian Harbor Yacht Club this year is challenging with Geo. H. Townsend's Greenwich Folly, a Nevin's built, Lord designed outfit, powered with a Packard motor.

Another newcomer in the Gold Cup class year is Walter P. Chrysler, who is entering his Miss Frolic. This is a very novel craft, designed by Alex Johnson and built by Jacob of City Island. Miss Frolic is powered with two, six cylinder Chrysler motors, which drive surface propellers. Not only is Miss Frolic the only twin screw boat in the Regatta, but she is the first to be driven by surface propellers to ever compete for the Gold Cup.

[text missing]

(Reprinted from ?, ? 1926, pp. 9-11, 52+)

Hydroplane History Home Page
This page was last revised Thursday, April 01, 2010 .
Your comments and suggestions are appreciated. Email us at wildturnip@gmail.com
© Leslie Field, 2006