Cupid at the Helm
p. 21 · Read in the full issue
Lovesick Tongon Nearly Wrecks Ketch "Golden Hind"
A COUPLE of months ago, Mr. H. R.
Jenkins, of Auckland, who has been cruising in the South Seas for nearly a year in his 93 ft. ketch, “Golden Hind”, joined a steamer at a Central Pacific port and returned south to New Zealand to bid adieu to son Graham, leaving for overseas service with the RNZAF. His crew of two Tongans sailed the yacht north to Honolulu.
While awaiting the arrival of Mr.
Jenkins at Honolulu, the Tongans did a little quiet wooing among their comely Polynesian cousins on Oahu. One of the lads, smitten and bewitched by a dainty Hawaiian vahine, didn’t care how long the “Golden Hind’s” owner took to rejoin them.
But this is the Machine Age; and, within a short time, Mr. Jenkins step ped from a PAA Clipper at Honolulu.
Then, with the skipper on deck, came the day of departure. The vahine wailed; the Tongan tarried a while longer. Finally, Mr. Jenkins persuaded the lovesick sailor to board ship.
Headed south-west, the “Golden Hind” sped along, making good progress each day. But, as the weeks slipped by and no land smudged the horizon, Mr. Jen kins’ puzzled frown deepened, and more and more he snorted and quietly cursed those so-and-so Pacific sets.
Then, one evening, when the ketch was 28 days out of Honolulu, the skip per heard breakers ahead and came up just in time to put her about and avoid piling up on a reef.
Presently, when Mr. Jenkins went ashore in the dinghy, he was hailed by a voice, in an unmistakable American accent, “Welcome to Canton Island, bud!” And Skipper Jenkins had imag ined he was in Samoa!
It transpired that each night the lovesick Tongan, when on watch as the others slept, altered course in the hope of somehow getting back to Honolulu— and his Honolulu girl.
They were very kind, at the PAA base.
The “Golden Hind’s” auxiliary engine fuel was almost exhausted, and the food supply low; a roaring squall had car ried away the mainsail. But the well equipped store on Canton soon took care of these things, and once more the ketch was shipshape.
A few days later, the “Golden Hind”, Mr. Jenkins grimly at the helm and with one first-class Tongan mate and one slightly discredited Tongan deck-hand standing by, resumed her interrupted voyage to New Zealand.