Up from nowhere to an unofficial standing of fifth in the country is the season's record of Harvard's yachtsmen, one of the College's least known and most successful sporting representatives.

Their rise to fame started on April 18 with an 86 to 76 victory over a vaunted Yale team. At that time the sailors were the second Crimson sport to turn in a win over the Eli.

Off and On

The next day, they went on to place second to M.I.T. in a hexagonal meet for the Greater Boston Dinghy Trophy. These races were followed by a slight lull in winning activity, the sailors dropping to a fourth place out of eight in the Sharpe trophy competition at Providence. M.I.T. again plowed home with a first, followed by Brown and Yale.

M.I.T. proved an unshakable jinx later that week, nosing out the Crimson, 57 to 51, in a dual meet on the Charles, and placing third, just ahead of Harvard in the Ivy League championships in a later regatta. Brown, the most powerful naval force in the East, were masters of their home waters in this meet, riding home the winner with Yale following them in for a second.

But the worm was about to turn for Commodore Pete Putnam's hardy little band, who went on to clean up the consolation regatta of the New England Championships, beating out nine other opponents, after barely failing to qualify for the Nationals.

Win Challenge Cup

This was followed by the Crimson's greatest coup earlier this week, when it defeated a strong field including Yale and M.I.T. for the Dinghy Club Challenge Cup.

Putnam works out his principle that Harvard is the fifth-ranking College in the nation on the rather tenuous principle that the Crimson just barely failed to qualify for the New England championships, while three out of the four colleges that did, went on to win, place, and show respectively in the Nationals.