Hooky on the Sound

As a breeze-struck schoolboy of ten in New Orleans, Eugene Walet talked his father into buying him a Snipe Class sailboat. The elder Walet, who is president of the Jefferson Lake Sulphur Co., was soon shanghaied into a task familiar to the parents of juvenile sailors. Landlubber Walet began training as a weekend crewman under his son's command on Lake Ponchartrain.

By last week Gene, now a senior at New Orleans' Jesuit High School, was still at the helm and his father, now an experienced old salt, shared the honor of racing in the finals of the North American Sailing championship.

The Hard Way. In getting to the year's top racing, held in Long Island Sound's crisp September breezes off the Larchmont (N.Y.) Yacht Club, young Gene and seven other helmsmen had proved themselves the best sailors in the land. Earlier last month, in the eight racing regions of the U.S. and Canada, some 1,600 yachtsmen from 599 clubs had beat and run their boats through the sectional eliminations. To fly the colors of the Southern

Yacht Club in the finals, Gene Walet had scored the most points in a four-series total of 27 races.

In last year's first running of the North American competition, won by Larch-mont's well-weathered Yachtsman Corny Shields (TIME, July 27), the boats were Quincy Adams Class sloops, measuring 17 ft. at the waterline. This year they were yachting's most carefully standardized boats: the Norway-built International Class sloops, whose 33-ft. specimens are alike as pumpkin seeds. In Larchmont's eight races, each crew sailed each of eight boats once.

Until last week when he came North, young Gene had never seen an International. But Helmsman Walet, crewed by two Tulane University students and his father, quickly got the feel of the bigger, more complicated craft. He finished second and third in the first two races, then learned some of the Internationals' finer points the hard way when he came in next to last in the third race. After that, he was the sloops' master.

A Birthday Present. A fourth in the seventh race sent Gene into the point lead, but five other skippers were still close enough to pass his narrow margin, notably last year's runner-up, Charles 111 of Mantoloking, N.J. Aboard Wisp in the last race, Gene lay back at the starting line, careful not to jump the cannon. He got off well into a 14-knot southerly, rounded the windward mark of the 8|-mi. triangular course, billowed out his spinnaker to catch the wind for the second mark, then reached for home. All the way, he shrewdly covered Charlie Ill's boat (i.e., protected his edge in points by duplicating Ill's maneuvers, tack for tack). A scant 100 yards from the finish, Gene overtook the lead boat of the Maine Yacht Racing Association's James Ducey, who had lost time on an ill-advised tack, and sluiced in first. With 48 1/2 points over Ill's 45-4, Gene Walet was the year's top skipper. Glowed Gene: "I gave this race to my dad for his [52nd] birthday present." Then father Walet bundled Gene and his victory trophy, a mammoth silver soup tureen, back to New Orleans, where, technically, the National Champion would have to account to his teachers for missing two weeks of school.

Across Long Island Sound, at Oyster Bay, a team of six European skippers raced six U.S. and Canadian skippers to inaugurate an Old World-New World competition in Six-Meter Class boats. Both sides showed spectacular teamwork, covering rivals, stealing their wind while their teammates scudded ahead. In the end, despite the presence of Norway's Crown Prince Olaf at the tiller of one of the European team's six-meters, the New World outsailed the Old, four races to one.

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