News of Cruising Yachts

• WHEN IN TONGA; Not much is heard of the Nukualofa Yacht and Motor Boat Club, but It is still very much alive, with over 100 members, comfortable if old club house. and the usual facilities—bar services, library, table tennis, darts, a dance floor, and movie or colour-slide nights—as well as some yachting. There are about 15 boats, about half of which are launches and the remainder a rather assorted bunch, with no class-sailing as yet. Founded in 1950, the club is now in its third headquarters, located right on the waterfront a little east of Yellow Pier.

The official yachting season extends through the Trade Wind season. Recentlv Mr.

Dudley M. Blakely, originally of Boston, USA, was elected Commodore. Visiting yachtsmen are made welcome. • SEARCH AND RESCUE: An American reader draws our attention to a question naire form which French yachtsmen are required to complete before they proceed on off-shore voyages to provide informa tion in the event of such yachts going missing, and he rightly points out that this is a good idea.

As mentioned in these columns on various occasions the same scheme has been in operation in New Zealand for several years. The weakness of the scheme, as it has applied to New Zealand in the past, is that the completion of the form is voluntary, and that the form is not given to the yachtsman or required by the authorities for clearance of the vessel. Thus some yachtsmen knew nothing

A building familiar to visiting yachtsmen at Nukualofa, Tonga, is the club house of the Nukualofa Yacht and Motor Boat Club.

of the form’s existance, and others! just too tired to bother collecting one the Government Shipping Office. We believe that this is being coni and that the completion of a form soon be mandatory.

A few of the questions on the Fl form could well be combined in the: Zealand form —which is also availalj the Suva Harbour Master’s office possibly in New Zealand Island terr# like the Cooks and Western Samoa.] • WAIHAPE of Auckland, with J( Wray, cleared northern NZ March I Queensland, arriving Brisbane Marc He planned to go on to the Great B Reef. • ROMAYNE of Vancouver, in Au« for several months, cleared agaij Canada April 14, first port Papeete.] Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Riddell wer* other crew members. • REPOSADO. Brian NielP American-built motor cruiser, movi from Auckland April 5, bound Sydney 90-ft. launch has been for sale sim arrived at Auckland from Tahiti an last October. • L’HIRONDELLE. which David j man of Denmark sailed to Tonga ' ears ago, and later presented to a T prince, is now stationed in the I Group of Tonga and is named TAKA. e BEN GUNN, 41-ft. ketch from I Conn., USA, with Henry Horn, his Niki, and daughter Carlile, cleared I early March for Australia via 1 ports. • SI YE PAMBILI, 37-ft. ketchi England, with Southern Rhodesia, policeman Roger Gowen and Bill and two women aboard, also sailed Balboa early March bound trans fer Durban. • SECRET, a 28-foot sloop froi Virgin Islands, was preparing toi westward from Balboa in March, owner Peter Dohn was one other member, • FORTUNE, a 34-ft. Seagoer typ* with David and Nellie Goffeney s was also preparing to head for the; pagos from Balboa in March. This* left the home port of San Diego ago, and owner Goffeney has had with the Canal authorities in months. They plan a westbound o navigation voyage. • SYMBOL, home port Seattle, returned to the Galapagos in Marcht owner Bud Devine is well known t* ing yachtsmen and to overseas i amateurs. He makes occasional sb voyages to Panama on vacation frn engineering business at Academy Santa Cruz Island. This yacht is s ketch.

• Cruising Yachtsmen Transit*

Panama Canal may be interested td that a “PIM” file is maintained Balboa Yacht Club. That file inci6 is the first introduction to “PUT many yachtsmen heading for the • GOODEWIND of England, 5' 11%-ft. x 8-ft. ketch, owned by Ausl; born dental surgeon K. W. Laws, at crewman Lindsay Gillies, John and Keith Dunkley of Australia Michael Denny and Henry Strasbuc England aboard, reached Suva At from Papeete, having left that port! 23. Calls were made at Moorea, H Borabora and Suwarrow. The yao to be slipped at Suva to check for

when she spent several days on a 'Ahurei Bay, Rapa Island, in early T.

In Germany in 1928, the steel craft 'en new wooden deck-sheathing at Portugal, during the present Dr. Laws acquired the yacht in [ ead, England, in 1952. In 1958 he iime to leave his London practice iit Australia, where he purchased ft. cutter NIRVANA, sailed it to icles, and sold it. He then motored the US and travelled by ship to where GOODEWIND was laid up absence. The yacht will now head rney via Noumea. Mrs. Laws saw icht off from England last year lew to Australia. She flew from to Suva to meet her husband again 1. ’ARDUST, which has been in Fiji for about eight months, was pre to move off in May for Papeete he is to become a house-boat for a ►f Americans who were to arrive n a visit. They were to use the ed Fairmile for accommodation a charter arrangement. Captain rown of Suva was to join as nagi leaving his own charter ketch :0 in other hands temporarily. iRADE WINDS, which arrived in irom Auckland via Nukualofa on 2, sailed again for Honolulu on 8. A Canadian and an Australian, id been working in Fiji for the past ulned the crew the next leg. Calls Ikely at Rotuma and Apia, and Pago Pago, and the Palmyra. kMMERHAK 11, of Haifa, cleared in April for Indian Ocean ports.

•Joseph Havkins, lone-voyaging owner of Khe 23-£t. yawl, had spent nearly five [months in Rabaul working as a stevedore and road gang supervisor while he saved enough money to continue his round-the world voyage. If his plans work out satis factorily. he claims LAMMERHAK II will become the second-smallest vessel ever to make the voyage. • MANANA, of Sydney, was at Rabaul early in April after an uneventful (if lengthy) cruise from Sydney. Skippered by 24-year-old New Guinea patrol officer Mr. L. Hanson, the 28-ft. yawl cleared Sydney a few days before Christmas last year. Mr. Hanson had another patrol officer with him on the voyage, and MANANA called at Surfers Paradise, the Whitsunday Group, Cooktown and Samarai.

The yawl will be based at Kokopo, 20 miles from Rabaul on the shores of Blanche

Bay, where Mr. Hanson has been posted for the next two years. • HIGH TEA, a junk-yacht which left Hongkong last year for San Francisco with Brian Platt as owner-master, was last reported in Yokohama so will pre sumably not be seen in the South Pacific. • CRAIG J of the US, with Dayton J.

Lalonde lonehanding, left Apia westbound on March 20 after a week at that port.

Next port not stated. • MARIE CELINE, a schooner of ap proximately 40-ft., skippered by Winston Williams —who did a world cruise in Irving Johnson’s YANKEE some years ago, arrived in Papeete early March and is expected to be in French Polynesian waters for some time. Williams will be ferrying an American National Geographic Society photographer, who was to join at Papeete, round about these islands.

Not Again!

[?]yacht “Drifter”, of Wellington, photographed above at Raro [?], which was given up for lost it took 202 days on a passage Rarotonga to Auckland re [?] (“PIM”, April), was thought [?] overdue again in April, but turned up. “Drifter”, under [?]command of J. P. Moore, sailed Auckland on April 9 for her [?]mal destination Wellington and turned up in that port on 26, 17 days out. Moore des [?]d it as “an uneventful pas sage”.