News of the Small-Ships

Positions Established.

Through the combined operations of a surveyor ashore and a navi gating officer aboard NZGS Maui Poviare lying off the main landings, a further contribution was made in April to the never-ending world wide task of fixing positions of reefs, rocks and islands.

In this case the objects con cerned were Mauke and Atiu, in the Cook Lower Group. A series of celestial shots established the fact that Atiu actually lies about 2 miles north and I mile east of its present charted position, based on a 1919 survey. Calculations still incomplete showed that nearby Mauke appar ently lies about 11- miles north and 2 miles east of the charted posi tion. Exact details will eventually appear in Notices to Mariners.

Weather conditions were unsuit able for sights at Mitiaro.

Honiara Radio Schedules.

—The Post Master, Honiara. British Solomons, kindly advises that watch is maintained there for voice calls by shipping for short periods at 9 am and 3 pm daily, except Satur day and Sunday afternoons. Listen ing frequency is not stated but is assumed to be, as before, 6280 kc/s.

No watch is maintained on the In ternational voice distress frequency of 2182 kc/s, as yet. Weather broadcasts on R T are made daily at 10 am on 5826 kc s. The local broadcasting station, VQO, on 1030

kc, s, also gives a weather broadcast at 6.45 p.m. approximately. All times are local —11 hours ahead of

Gmt.

Fws Vessel In Polynesia

The American Fish & Wildlife Ser vice research vessel Charles H.

Gilbert called at Papeete early April in the course of a cruise through French Oceania waters on fishery research work. The 188ton. 105-ft radar-equipped vessel is commanded by Captain Jack Ben son and is normally based on Hono lulu, though the current cruise be gan from Los Angeles with calls at Nuku Hiva, Raroia, Makemo, Faka rava, Raraka and British Christ mas Island prior to her arrival at Papeete. There she landed two tons of fish as a gift to local in stitutions before clearing for Christ mas Is. on April 5.

Charles H. Gilbert (built in Tacoma, Wash., in 1952) has a beam of 20 ft and a draft of 11 ft. An other somewhat similar type of FWS vessel called at Papeete a couple of years ago in course of a cruise which included Micronesian waters and the South West Pacific and which was said to have provided in formation on which the present E, Samoa tuna fishery was established last year.

Notes From Suva.—Morris

Hedstrom & Co’s recently acquired Fiji trader Adi Keva —the former

Le Phoque. of Noumea—was in trouble in March. She was adrift for some considerable time following' an engine breakdown off Namema Lala Island, until the same owners' AUair arrived on the scene and towed her in to Levuka for repairs.

Burns Philp’s Yanawai, largest vessel in the Fiji inter-island trade, was undergoing an extensive Lloyds survey in Suva during April-May.

Mr. J. E. Catanach, resigned from engineering managership of Millers Ltd., Suva ship-builders and re pairers, will return to Australia in mid-June.

Suva Public Works Department slipway instituted a system of gate passes to the docking area. This seems to be one result of an inquiry

—findings of which have never been made public—into certain aspects of Public Works operations there.

Captain Stanton Page was ex pected back from furlough to re join the LMS vessel John Williams in May. In his absence the vessel has been commanded by Chief Officer Bottom.

From Tiif Cooks. Public

Works Director said in May that, though funds have been voted for carrying out dredging and other im provements to the main Avarua passage at Rarotonga, it will not be possible to proceed with the work until a suitable dragline machine is approved by the NZ Ministry of Works. It is desirable that the dragline also be available for other Lower Group reef passages, and the difficulty is in designing or obtaining one that could be landed by boat at those islands.

Meanwhile, the Avarua passage is steadily silting up and it is now be coming difficult even to launch the Union Steam Ship Co’s lighters from their slipway. These lighters handle almost all incoming overseas cargo.

Inspire, Mr. Hugh Williams’ Brix ham trawler, after an extensive engine overhaul in Auckland, left there early May to return to work in the Cooks. This handy auxiliary craft is said to be still for sale, due to the owner having acquired a fruit farm in Rarotonga and desir ing to settle ashore.

Mr. Jean Thorot, of Papeete, formerly engineer in Vahinano and other French Oceania trading craft, recently came to the Cook Islands join Mr. D. C. Brown’s 300former Rannah as chief engineer. In mid-May, Mrs. Thorot also came over to the Cooks. It was rumoured that Rannah might make a June

call at Suwarrow to carry out hull painting and running repairs to the bottom in the sheltered waters of that lagoon anchorage. In the past, sizeable schooners were regularly careened at Penrhyn atoll in the north. Tidal rise and fall is only a couple of feet in the Cooks.

Calling at Mauke Island, in April,

PlM’s representative found not a sign of the 1952 wreck of dagger & Harvey’s Te Aroa —formerly the American schooner-yacht Ornant—

except an expensive hollow mast,

rigging and sails stored ashore. Also at the main landing was a wooden

Carley-float type of life raft, canvas

covered, painted white with under coat of grey, but without other marks of identification, which was found some months ago on the reef and did not belong to Te Aroa. as far as is known.

News of Cruising Yachts

From Our Panama Canal Zone

Correspondent. Max Hart

• XARIFA, owned by noted undersea photographer and spear-fisherman Hans Hass, of Germany (which we mentioned here some months ago) has turned back eastward. The big 269 gross tons motor yacht, after passing through the canal, visited Cocos (of treasure fame), the Galapagos, and the San Bias Islands in the Gulf of Panama. On March 11. the yacht with its 21-man crew was back at Cristobal at the Atlantic end of the canal, and about to clear for Caribbean islands. The expedition is financed by the International Institution for Sub marine Research, whose headquarters are at Lichtenstein. The scientific party in cluded a British photographer. Earlier it had been rumoured that “Xarifa” would come westward to do work in the Australian Barrier Reef area. • CHIQUITA. which Jack Campbell, of Auckland, skippered from that port to San Pedro In 1952, is on the move again, having arrived at Cristobal late March.

The reverse-sheer cutter, which the owners hoped to sell in the States originally, was on March 28 awaiting fair weather to clear for Florida, where a further attempt would be made to sell the 30-footer. • LANDFALL II cleared Balboa February 28, westbound for the Galapagos and French Oceania. and eventually round the world, with a certain call at Auckland. Owner W. F. Holcomb with his wife and two others (Dr. Dean Smith and Raymond Jonsson) left the home port of Oakland, Cal., October 18 last, and. expect to be out with the big 50-footer for about three years. The staysail schooner has taken part in two past Trans-Pacific races. She was previously named “Mavourneen.” • VARUA, William A. Robinson’s hand some yacht based on Papeete, headed for Hilo, Hawaii, in mid-April. Mr. Robinson, who has a property in the Paea district of Tahiti, made his last long voyage in “Varua” to South American ports and Panama two years ago, being absent from Papeete about a year. • FEAOUA, owned by Dr, Stern, formerly American but now a French citizen of French Oceania, arrived in Papeete during April from the Marquesas, where Dr. Stern has been stationed. This 27-foot double-ender was brought from France on the deck of an MM liner in 1952 and was owned in Papeete for a

short while by Mr. George Hunt (then acting British Consul, and present owner of the Australian-built steel cutter “Corsair”, at present lying at Auckland).

Yachtsmen calling at the Marquesas during the past two years will be familiar with this little craft. • KONA, with Paul Blackford and Bob Houtz and a new crew member. Roger Skolmen, aboard, moved on from Papeete.

April 6. heading for Moorea, Bora Bora.

Samoa and probably New Zealand, with a possible call first at Suva. Some work was done on the 40-ft staysail schooner at Papeete, including change from wheel to tiller steering. Home port, as earlier reported, is Honolulu. The same crew members cruised to French Oceania in 1950-51 in the yacht “Mollilou”.

• LES 4 VENTS, 16 days out of Raro tonga, arrived at Auckland for an ex pected three weeks’ stay, In mid April.

Owner Marcelle Bardiaux, 44-years-old Frenchman, plans to head from there €©• Noumea, thence via Torres Strait and South Africa.

This single-handed voyage by way of Cape Horn in winter, in an entirely self built 29-ft sloop, must lake its place as the most notable post-war voyage to date; and, even should the circumnavigation not be completed, as one of the greatest voyages of all time. Yachtsmen around the world will certainly take off their hats to M. Bardiaux.

Few yachts, indeed, have made a west bound passage via the Horn, let alone in winter. He certainly did not escape un

scathed—a frost-bitten leg still gives him trouble, and the yacht was damaged—but, perhaps with a good deal of luck, he made it. Heading up the coast, he set out for Tahiti, from Valparaiso, after completing repairs. The voyage from •now on should be a mere week-end cruise, compared with what went before. • RAKOA, a 47-ft motor cruiser manned by five Wellington, NZ, business men. left that port early April for a two or three months’ voyage to Pacific Island ports.

RETIRED.—In Rarotonga in May we came across Captain Van Ness Budd, an American master mariner who now has settled there, in the Muri district. He will be remembered in Samoa and else where as former owner of the yacht “Taimanu”, in which he cruised through Polynesia, and eventually sold to Dr.

Bliss, then CMO in W’. Samoa. Later, Captain Budd skippered the well-known Halvorsen boat “Solveig” from Honolulu back to Sydney, after that yacht had sailed in the Trans-Pacific Race several years ago. “Taimanu”, a Seabird type of hard-chine yawl, is now owned in Auckland. Captain Budd. who suffered an injury to his hearing at Okinawa during the war. and consequently is not easy to converse with, says he still feels the urge to head forth again at times, but has decided that Rarotonga will be his future home “taking things all round, the best little isle in the Pacific.”

The CARIAD AGAIN—A South African yacht has just reached Brisbane on its second world cruise since the war. She is the 103-feet, “Cariad I,” South Africa’s biggest yacht, and aboard her is her owner. Mr. A. W. Flitton. a Pretoria motor distributor. He is making a trip with a crew of nine under a Canadian.

Alan Bath, as skipper. The crew includes young South Africans who have given up their jobs to make the trip. A Zulu is full-time cook. On the first trip, which took two years and five months. “Cariad I” logged 30,000 miles. The present trip from South Africa, via Panama Canal.

Australia and Indian Ocean, might take “just a little less”. The ketch was built in 1896 at Southampton for Lord Dun raven. She left Brisbane in mid-May for Port Moresby.

TO CROSS PACIFIC—Mrs. Ann David son, 39, an English widow and the first woman to cross the Atlantic single handed, said on May 3, at Plymouth, she now hopes to cross the Pacific alone in the same 23-ft Bermudian sloop, “Felicity Ann.”

Queen Salote left her capital, Nukualofa, on May 8 to attend the annual conference of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga at Vavau. She travelled on the Gov ernment despatch vessel Hifofua.

Rev. John Chisholm, New Guinea missionary, has received a book of Coronation photographs from the Queen Mother, who heard that he missed the Coronation broadcast.