Raft Voyager Still Plans
p. 13 · Read in the full issue
To Head For Australia
After a voyage of 7,450 miles from Peru to Western Samoa in 130 days raftsman William Willis, aged 70, still plans to continue on to Australia. He says he will head for Botany Bay.
BUT just when he sets out on this leg depends on medical advice, for Willis in late November was pre paring to leave Apia by air for America for surgical treatment of a hernia suffered during the voyage from Peru.
Willis and his raft left Peru on July 4 and arrived in Western Samoa at 7 p.m. on November 11 (see p. 105 for details). He planned to reach Australia non-stop and carried a visa to land.
His arrival caused a great sensation in Samoa. Local newsmen were bom barded with requests for news stories; the local newspapers sold out; and Willis received offers from all over the world for his story.
He said he would make no deci sions till he got to Australia.
But he gave details to some local people, including Messrs. Vernon MacKenzie and Eric Smith.
He told them he realised 500 miles from Peru that the rudders on his raft were too light and wouldn’t take the shock of the seas.
He attempted to turn about so he could rebuild the rudders on land, but heavy winds drove him away, to the Galapagos and across the Equator.
He made running repairs as best he could, sometimes with seas breaking 10 or 20 feet above him.
But the possibility of reaching Aus tralia, he said, “became more and more dim”. Because he was unable to steer he often drifted helpless.
He planned finally to make repairs in Fiji, but the weather worsened and he was driven back by westerly winds. Finally he set course for Apia when he realised he was about 200 miles away from Samoa.
When he arrived only six miles from Apia he said he told the first people he saw “to broadcast the news, to call up the Prime Minister at once and whoever might be interested because I was worried about my wife getting the news that I was alive”. • The photographs, by "Samoana", show Willis as he was when he arrived, and his raft on the beach at Puipa'a.