Vanderbilt's wife. Gertrude—the first woman to serve in a Cup defender's afterguard—christens Ranger as the yacht begins her slide into the Kennebec River on May 11, 1937. The owner stepped Ranger‘s 165-foot duralumin mast (seen lashed to her deck at right} just after the launch so her builders could see her in full glory. It was an "expensive Iittle thought," he later wrote: The $15,000 mast broke off while Ranger was being towed to Newport.