Cruising Yachts

• SEA WIND, 38 ft ketch with Mr, and Mrs. Malcolm Graham, which we last heard of from Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) last November, reached Aden recently.

The Grahams made many friends when they were in the Pacific in 1962-63.

In a note to PIM from Aden, written on March 29, Mrs. Graham said: “We left Cocos-Keeling Island in November, 1963, after most royal treatement by John and Gerald Clunies Ross and the boys at the marine base and cable station.

“Had a slow trip of 30 days to the Seychelles, except near Chagos Archipelago, where a hurricane in the making drove us away.

“We stayed three months in the Seychelles and are at present in Aden enjoying ourselves back in civilisa tion.

“We are leaving for Suez in company with the New World and will continue to the Mediterranean to Athens. We miss finding PIM on the newstands.”

Note: The New World, an H-28 ketch from Vancouver owned by Mr. and Mrs. Bill Graeber, was in the Pacific for three years until she left Thursday Island for Timor last September. • WINDSONG, 48 ft. auxiliary ketch, reached Rarotonga early in April from Auckland, en route to Tahiti, Hawaii and San Francisco.

The passage took 17 days. This was the yacht’s second visit to Rarotonga, her last being in 1958.

Windsong sailed from Melbourne for Auckland in January. Plans are to spend about a year in the Pacific.

The ketch’s crew comprises: Cap tain J. E. Walker (skipper), P. M.

Weate (owner), R. Holden, C.

O’Connor and P. Tatsel. • WANDERER, famous 96 ft topsail schooner, commanded by Captain Omer Darr, which is well known in French Polynesia, is expected in these parts again soon from San Francisco.

The schooner will be on charter, with 15 young men from Los Angeles on board studying navigation. She is expected to reach the Marquesas about July 14 (Bastille Day).

The Wanderer was in Papeete late last year and early this year. She

sailed an February 25 with the intention of calling at Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa, Bora Bora, and Flint and Caroline Islands before going on to Honolulu.

From the Hawaiian capital, Captain Darr’s plans were to go on to San Francisco. He planned to head south again in June. • AUAU KAI, Los Angeles yacht, with Roger and Beth Bath and their sons Roy, 15, and Phil, 12, was due to leave Russell, New Zealand, on April 12 for Tonga.

In a note to PIM from Russell, saying he was “surprised” to see a photograph of Auau Kai, taken in Nukualofa in mid-November, pub lished in PIM for January (p. 109), Mr. Bath said he and his family had reached NZ from Tonga on Decem ber 9 after a 12-day voyage which included “two beautiful gales”.

Mr. Bath went on: “We left Long Beach, California, on June 30 for our around-the-world cruise. So far, we have visited the Marquesas, Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, Bora Bora, Rarotonga, Tonga and New Zealand.

“Now that the hurricanes are over, we are leaving here on April 12 and back-tracking to Tonga, where we had missed the two upper groups.

From there, we will go to the Fiji Islands, leaving Suva by July 15, and going to New Caledonia and Bris bane.” • VALKYRIE, 31 ft ketch, sailed into Brisbane early in March with lone-hander John Goetzcke, a man who has tackled life and adventure from an unusual angle.

He has reversed the usual procedure of a young man sailing away to seek romance and adventure in the far corners of the world, for he is 69, a grandfather and a businessman.

Although he started his career as a sailor and had been round the Horn in a windjammer before World War I, he left the sea in 1915 and joined a mining company in Colorado, USA.

He still works for this company, but in 1957, when the company wanted him to go to Chile, he decided to go there by yacht—and he has been travelling that way on company business ever since.

Having reared a family and being free, he sold his property to buy Valkyrie.

He has already travelled many thousands of miles, but there are still many places he wants to see.

However, he makes one small concession to time, and says he is too old to make plans for the distant future.