News Of Cruising Yachts

O MONSOON, Herb Hope’s 47 ft.

San Diego-registered yacht, was due to leave Auckland about February 7 to cross the Tasman to Australia.

Monsoon had been in New Zealand since early December after a 10-day voyage from Suva.

Mr. John Burgess, of Tuakau, who sent us news of Monsoon, said she was continually in the public eye at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf. Coco, Skipper Herb Hope’s pet Indian Minah, daily attracted a gallery of admirers as he wolf-whistled and wel comed visitors with his “Hi!”

Mr. Burgess said the yacht would have a crew of four for the Tasman crossing—the skipper, cook-deckhand Barbara Boulter, Eric Johnson, an Australian, and Gary Wheeler, a New Zealander. • TUARANGI, 40 ft. double ender ketch, reached Sydney from Russell, New Zealand, on January 23 on the first stage of a voyage round the world. Tuarangi has a crew of four: Peter Baxter, Jack Crooks, Jack Hargraves and John Morton. Three of the crew took seven years of their spare time to build the ketch in their home town of Invercargill, in NZ’s South Island.

ter a leisurely cruise up the NZ ist, they left Russell, at the top of North Island, on January 5. They nt five days at Lord Howe Island the way to Sydney, and their ns were to stay in Sydney for a nth before sailing to the Great rier Reef and on to England via Cape of Good Hope. > CRAIG J 11, 20 ft ketch, which yton J. La Londe, of Los Angeles, single-handing from New Zealand Los Angeles, arrived in Rarotonga January 15. Craig J II has no ine. Her owner intended to stay Rarotonga for a week before ding for Tahiti. La Londe sighted otonga three days before he made t. > KALONA, yacht ex-Honolulu, reported to be 25 miles north of otonga on January 16. She was ected to anchor at the island that moon. Aboard the yacht are R.

Mcllvride, skipper, W. J.

Larthy, mate, Dave Hamon and e Siess. Kalona reached Penrhyn nd on January 8 and left for otonga the following day. > ABACUS, Park and Gloria rthose’s yacht, and four others 2 all “waiting out the season” in a early in February before going The other four were Fortune, i Dave and Nellie Goeffney, of lolulu; Geneve, with Michel mod, of Geneva, Switzerland; ■ Peter, American enthnologist Phillips’ 40-ton motor yacht; and John Hanna, with C. K. Wing J. Counterman. was reported earlier that the ffneys were planning to visit Aus a in Fortune before returning to 'aii. Blue Peter was last reported be going to New Zealand for irs. And Mermod’s Geneve is g single-handed round the world i Callao.

T. Wing said in a cordial note i Suva that the John Hanna was g on to Vila and Malekula, New rides, after the hurricane season, nee leaving Tai-o-Hae, in the quesas, last July, the yacht had sd Ua Pou, Takaroa, Manihi, ;ete, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea, aa, Bora Bora, Aitutaki and Pago ). r. Wing said he had written rs to PIM from three of those 5, and that as we reported in uary that we had not heard from John Hanna since July, the letters st have gone astray somewhere”. :y must have! We haven’t re id any of them). r. Wing added that the Royal ( Yacht Club had graciously

nded its hospitality to the crew all the yachts in port. “They ; made all of us feel at home, we will always remember”, he KOONYA, formerly of Sydney, :h left Hawaii with skipper Les res for California early in )ber, was up for sale in Los eles in December. Captain Ed :, of Long Beach, California, in Jtter to PIM which took two ths to reach us, said she was in i new condition, showing excellent and attention”. “She is for sale gside my sloop Salute ,” he added, aptain Fink also reported that the ir Hunikai, owned by a Mr. stopher, had reached Tahiti by of the Marquesas from San o. “His family and a friend had ;ry pleasant sail,” Captain Fink MANU MOANA, 40 ft. cutter, red at Guam from Truk just re Christmas. Owner-skipper is Richard J. Powley, an Auckland ulting psychologist. Miss Denise rali, of Auckland, is a crew iber. Leah Wheeler, of Truk, sent us this news, said that the iu Moana had made a mercy trip i Truk to the Hall Islands “carry a medical officer and food sup for the distressed Hall Is ers”. Leah Wheeler’s letter, which

took two months to reach us, also reported that Captain A 1 and wife Mike Gehrman’s 36 ft. cruiser Myonie arrived in the Palau Islands from Truk just before Christmas.

The Gehrmans, who are on a world cruise, left their home port of Miami in November, 1961. • NEOPHYTE, Lee Quinn’s 40 ft. yacht with an all-girl crew of four, reached Honolulu on January 21, 25 days out of San Francisco. The crew is Giselle Mayer, 22, Jackie Miller, 24, Susan Bird, 20, and Mrs. Karol Hope, 20.

During the month of Neophyte’s arrival, Hawaii suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous weather, with gale after gale sweeping in from the

south-west. Neophyte was the only smallship which saw fit to ignore the weather implications of the North Pacific.

The operation got more publicity in Hawaii than Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic. But local yachtsmen coldly considered Quinn’s attractive vessel to be aptly named since: ★ Not even mad dogs and English men make trans-Pacs in January; and ★ All-girl crews are old, old hat.

However, Neophyte appeared in good shape when she arrived under jib and mizzen, except for a lashing around the mainmast at the spreaders.

She had had several bad days in a gale shortly before arriving. (Over)

[?] ER: Still to be seen in Simpson Har [?], Rabaul, is the roving ketch "Stag [?]d", skippered by owner Paul Hurst. [?] "Staqhound" has been in and out of [?] ul for over a year. Hurst is at present [?] ting a crew member before con tinuing.

Quinn’s wife, who was surfing on Oahu when Neophyte arrived, was to join the vessel as first mate for a voyage to the South Pacific. • OKEANOS, with Joe Pacher negg, his fiancee Benita Burge, and Ludwig Syassen, left Papeete on January 31 for a long stretch of lonely voyaging. Okeanos, a 39 ft. staysail schooner, which had been in Papeete since early December, was off to visit Rapa, the southernmost inhabited island in French Polynesia, and from there she was going on to Valparaiso. (Rapa is the island where the women are said to outnumber the men by six to one.) Joe, in a cheery note to PIM be fore sailing, said Tahiti was “a nice place for a time, but expensive for longer”.

“Besides,” he went on, “it is not the destination of a seaman to rot in harbour, so tomorrow we will be off for Rapa and Valparaiso.

“Benita and I will be alone for the biggest part of this trip. But as far as Rapa we’ve got a chap, Ludwig Syassen, on leave from Port Moresby, to come with us. He wants to find out about all those girls on that is land, he says.

“We will stay a few days at Rapa and then head towards the south-east, 35-40 degrees South, and then steer for Juan Fernandez and Valparaiso.

Should these latitudes prove to be difficult, we might head further north, probably towards Callao. Peru.

“The Okeanos is now well fitted out and well prepared, and we hope to arrive in South America by the middle of April.”

Joe added that he would send PIM a story about rarely-visited Rapa from his next “big stop”. We are looking forward to receiving it. ® TEMPEST, 28 ft. cutter, re turned to Auckland in January after a two-year, 17,000-mile cruise in the Pacific. The Tempest left Auckland in April, 1961, with a crew of four, including the co-owners, Messrs. R.

Jones and M. Nell, of Tauranga, New Zealand. Two crew members left at various stages of the voyage to return home and were replaced by two other Kiwis.

The Tempest carried a doctor and oxygen from Rarotonga to Aitutaki to save the life of a baby and touched bottom twice while entering Aitutaki’s long, narrow passage. From the Cook Islands, the cutter sailed to Honolulu where the crew took on the

job of sailing a retired Los An] businessman’s 34 ft. ketch home him—he having had enough aftei Los Angeles-Honolulu trip.

Last June, the Tempest set ot return home via Christmas and ning Islands, but atomic tests mai necessary to detour to Tahiti.

Noumea was the next port of and then the Queensland coast visited. Here the crew encounter severe electrical storm that coni them to a small coral lagoon, ai whale which lashed at their boat its tail but missed. • Where are you, yachtsrr Where have you been—wl are you going next? Drop a postcard at your next por call.

Rapa, the picturesque island in French Poly nesia where the women are said to outnumber men by six to one, will be one of the stopping places for Joe P achernegg's schooner "Okeanos" on her latest cruise.