the time has come , the walrus said , to talk of many things of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages - and kings . next year we shall see another America &apos;s cup contest . this time it will be Australia who will be making her first challenge . there were strong rumours that the Americans would not build a new defender and that they would rely upon Stephen &apos;s designed Columbia , perhaps improved , and easterner which has been much improved and has had twelve hundred pounds taken out of her in the form of cabin fittings and needless furniture . this has allowed about six hundred pounds of lead to be added to her keel . now I hear that easterner &apos;s designer Ray Hunt has been commissioned to design a new potential defender . she will be built at Graves Yard in Marblehead , Mass , next door to Ted Hood &apos;s sail loft . the combination is a good one and the new boat will be much fancied . my American informant remarks that the trials next summer will be better than the actual races for the cup and this was true of the last challenge . he ends up by saying : unless the Aussies have shaved the rules so closely that they squeak I think we might win again . I hear that the red duster syndicate has ordered a 12-metre to Arthur Robb &apos;s design from Groves &amp; Guttridge of Cowes . it will be a new venture on the part of this firm to build a twelve . no information has been published as to the result of the extensive tests made for this syndicate in the Saunders Roe tank . they have been going on for a long time and much money has been spent . from what I can discover the general conclusion , after much experimenting in tanks , is that it is difficult to improve much upon the performance of hulls . it is , I think , generally accepted that there is still a considerable margin for a breakthrough in the motive power - sails . as I said last month , no one would dream of using cotton sails for racing to-day and there is still probably room for improvement upon Terylene rather by processing it or by using some form of sheer plastic . perhaps one answer may be the Ratsey Venturi spinnaker . the vents are claimed to direct a strong downward thrust of air just forward of the sail giving the spinnaker increased lift and driving power . the idea is based on experience with aeronautical parachutes and will be shown by Ratsey and Lapthorn Inc at the 1962 national motorboat show in New York . the Australian challenger designed by Alan Payne is making good progress at Lars Halvorsen and Sons &apos; yard on the Parramatta River at Ryde , Sydney . she is expected to be in commission in December and her first job will be trials against Vim . the Australians have realistically decided that unless she can beat Vim there is no use sending her to the States . allowing for a period of tuning they should know the ability of their new unnamed 12 by February . she will probably leave Sydney during May , 1962 , as deck cargo and she has to be at the starting line off Newport , Rhode Island , on September 15 . Vim will return to the States in the same way at about the same time . the challenger will have a light alloy mast built from American components . her sails will be made in Sydney from imported synthetic sailcloth by Peter Cole and Joe Pearce . the materials for them will probably also come from America . two eleven-man teams have been trained in Vim but they have lacked the stimulus of competition and it occurs to me that it would have been a nice gesture to have shipped Sceptre to Australia at the close of her successful season . Sceptre &apos;s recent successes have led some people to make adverse comments about her crew in the America &apos;s cup races but it must be remembered that in Evaine she only had a trial horse and not a contender for the challenge while the Americans enjoyed the fiercest competition in their trials to select their defender . her arrival in Sydney in the autumn , or shall we say Sydney &apos;s spring , would have put new life into the training of the two crews . the Australian syndicate led by Sir Frank Packer are reputed to be spending &amp;pound;250,000 on their cup bid . let us hope that Alan Payne , the builders , sailmakers and crew can pull something out of the bag , for in many ways the dice are inevitably loaded against them . displaced by the rebuilding programme of the royal Thames yacht club , the international yacht racing union annual conference took place in the naval and military club , colloquially known , on account of the notices on its entrance , as the in and out . the conference opened on Monday , October 30 , and ended on Friday , November 3 , with the general assembly of the union which takes place once every three years and which is attended by representatives from all member nations . in fact 27 delegates took their seats , some of whom represented more than one country and these delegates were assisted by their advisers . when one considers that the permanent committee and all the sub-committees are similarly helped by advisers one gets some idea of the formidable body of international yachtsmen who descend upon London for this occasion . there are 41 member countries and I should say that this international meeting is an outstanding example of how international affairs can be conducted in harmony . yachtsmen , it seems , even if they do not agree , can disagree gracefully and I think that much of the success of these annual meetings is due to the tactful and impartial chairmanship of Peter Scott , the President , backed by Harry Morgan ( U.S.A ) and Jan Loeff ( Netherlands ) as Vice-Presidents , and by the knowledge and experience of the Hon President , King Olav 5 of Norway . over the years I have watched the members of the permanent committee and the sub-committees shaking down together in the realization that each knows his job , and each may well have his idiosyncrasies . while there is continual change and a few new faces every year , they become absorbed into the main body of the union and known by their Christian names , and there are a few , for instance , who would dream of addressing the Count of Caria as anything but Bernardo . as usual , delegates were entertained to dinner by the royal yachting association and a very pleasant affair it was , if a little cramped in its temporary quarters . there was the usual cocktail party at the royal ocean racing club , and group Captain Haylock &apos;s theatre party which includes the wives . it seems that the latter come over mainly for the purpose of going to our theatres in the evenings and indulging in the most glorious shopping spree imaginable by day , sometimes admirably helped by their daughters . at a recent meeting , the planning committee of the Hampshire County council approved , with certain safeguards , the building of a conventional power station by the central electricity generating board at Fawley between the Fawley oil refinery and Calshot . the power station will be three times the size of that at Marchwood , at the head of Southampton Water . it is thus fairly certain that with its 600 ft chimney it will be visible from all parts of the Solent . unlike an oil refinery one can not grumble much about the fumes , smell and industrial dirt , generally , for little comes out of the chimney except possibly invisible gasses . cooling water in vast quantities will be discharged into Southampton Water but except for being warmed it will be unchanged . what we can and do object to , however carefully landscaped and however beautifully designed this power station may be , is the fact that we shall be able to see it from all parts of the Solent . this may seem a slight objection but it is a valid one . it is necessary to man , and an amenity , to be able to look at unspoilt nature and this , to a large extent , he can still do on the Solent although it is fortuitous and can not be attributed to anything except lack of development before 1945 . we have sacrificed part of this precious amenity already for we can see the flames and chimneys of Fawley over the trees of the New Forest practically anywhere in the west Solent . they are , however , not particularly obtrusive , but there will be no hiding a great , gloomy power station . it will brood over the Solent . it is particularly important that when you have only one little stretch of sheltered water that is a recreational area for literally millions of people that it should not be brooded over by anything , whatever it is . I will freely admit that the old Calshot air station is no thing of beauty , it is a pity it ever happened , but the buildings are not particularly large and as one proceeds west down the Solent it is soon unnoticeable . not so this great power station . we shall probably be able to see it from beyond the Needles , certainly the chimney will be visible for miles further down the Channel . people have argued that one does not matter : this is the last : there is still a lot left : that we should get used to it . we do n&apos;t agree with any of these comforting thoughts . with the power station established , greedy hands will be stretched out for something more , and if we do not jealously guard every inch of the Solent we shall have power stations , oil refineries , factories and industry leapfrogging down the banks until , what shall we have left ? an industrial drain like the London river . who wants to go sailing on dirty water ? yes , the water will be dirty all right . these are some of the things which we should ponder over , but not waste too much time thinking about . while I sympathize with the central electricity generating board , for nobody wants either their power stations or their pylons , yachtsmen of today have a duty to those of future generations . for some time I have been drawing attention to the need for the royal yachting association to take under its wing marine motoring . I now hear that Donald Campbell and Major John Abraham , Commodore of the royal motor yacht club , have registered the British power boat association after considerable preparatory work . since then discussions have taken place between Major Abraham and members of the general purposes committee of the royal yachting association and there is every hope that motor yachting and motorboat racing and even waterski-ing will eventually be brought under the R.Y.A umbrella . on November 13 Major Abraham called a meeting of interested parties on the motor side , but certain of the motorboat racing fraternity felt that they might be swallowed lock , stock and barrel by a powerful and established R.Y.A . I can assure them that their fears are groundless . they will be on the same footing as dinghy racing or for that matter any other branch of the sport . a steering committee of the motorboat side has been formed to undertake further discussions with the royal yachting association and let us hope that before the new season opens we shall see the sport of motorboating in all its branches firmly ensconced in the royal yachting association organization , members , as it were , of the commonwealth of yachting . without doubt a situation has now been reached on the south coast where , unless something is done soon , yachting and yachtbuilding will be severely restricted because there will be nowhere to keep the yachts , and orders are , in many instances , either being cancelled or conditional upon a mooring being available . in Dartmouth a marina has already been opened and , this , in a part of the world where the congestion was nothing like that around the Solent . it seems to be going well and this may encourage others to push on with their plans in a number of places such as Poole , Bournemouth , Lymington , Hamble and Portsmouth on the Solent , two places on Chichester Harbour and in Newhaven and Swanage . 