Another nice painting in Bermuda

When I look at these old paintings and read some of the accounts of sailing in Bermuda in the Spring, I envy the 6 meter sailors of old. For around a decade the 6 meter racers of Long Island Sound sent their boats via ship to Hamilton, Bermuda to sail in fleet and team races. The American sailors who came to Bermuda for these early season contests counted as the best there were at the time, including Briggs Cunningham, Cornelius and Paul Shields, Ray Hunt, Olin J Stephens, Herman 'Swede' Whiton, Robert Meyer, and many others. The Bermuda sailors, such as Eldon and Kenneth Trimingham and Bert Darrell were famous for their hospitality and the good sportsmanship they displayed. The trophies presented for competition included the Prince of Wales Trophy, a fleet race, the Governor's Cup, presented by Sir Thomas Astley-Cubitt for 4 boat international team racing, and the grand daddy of them all, the King Edward VII Gold Cup, which was given to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club by Sherman Hoyt for match racing. Mr. Hoyt had won the massive Gold Cup at a regatta attached to the strange 1907 Jamestown Exhibition, which celebrated the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in the Virginia colony.

The artist is Tore Asplund, who worked primarily in watercolor and focused on marine views, city scenes, and military subjects. The painting below shows 3 sixes, the closest of which is US 65 Challenge, which is being sailed by Cornelius and Paul Shields. It should be noted that this was the regatta where Cornelius Shields first saw K 49 Saga and wa sso captivated by the boat that he commissioned Bjarne Aas to design a new one design class, the International One Design (IOD) based on Saga's sweet lines. The other boats have indistinct numbers on their sails, thus are difficult to identify. The painting first appeared in Yachting Magazine in April 1936.