Shipping News

In Brief

• LAST VOYAGE: The Dutch ails liner Willem Rays visited 'dney for the last time in November ider her present name and owner ip. In Sydney she picked up .ssengers for Wellington, Callao, ilboa, Port au Prince, Miami, srmuda, Southampton and Rotter m. The termination of this voyage 11 bring an end to the Dutch ails round-the-world service.

• Timber Carrier: The New

linea manager of Bulolo Gold ■edging Ltd., Mr. R. P. J. Weedon, is present on October 24 at the inching in Newcastle, NSW, of a iding barge for carrying timber >m the company’s leases in New linea. The barge is being built by rrington Slipways Pty, Ltd.

• Extra Slipway: Fiji’S

inding Finance Committee has •eed to reinstate an old slipway Suva at a cost of £lO,OOO because 3 new slipways built there in 1961 : now insufficient to handle the mber of ships that want to use m.

Recently shipowners have been jking slipway space as much as months in advance to ensure intenance for their vessels.

> New Medical Ship: The

i Medical Department’s new ship, niwai-ni-Y asawa, has undergone isfactory trials. She will be used the Yasawas and Mamanucas, off north-west coast of Viti Levu, 1 will be stationed at Kese.

Tie ship is 21 ft long, is vered by a diesel engine, and has extended cruising range. She was It by the Fiji PWD.

I Total Wreck: The

thodist Mission coastal vessel mour ran aground on a reef off eastern tip of Papua recently and ame a total wreck. •our coastal vessels which were rby took off the passengers and v, none of whom was injured. )se rescued were taken to Nimoa nd nearby, which is about 350 ;s south-east of Port Moresby. > NEW: A new ship for the ianesian Mission, the 58 ft MV. vyn, arrived at Honiara on ober 14.

• KISMET, a yacht from Boston, Massachusetts, arrived in Rarotonga on October 2 from Society Islands, after previously visiting the Bahamas, Jamaica, Panama, Galapagos Islands and Tahiti.

The yacht carries a crew of four— Mr. and Mrs. J. L. Wales, and Mr. and Mrs. K. Wunderlich. Mr.

Wunderlich is a physicist and his wife is a doctor. Mr, Wales is an engineer and his wife is a publishing house assistant.

The group planned to go on to Tonga and New Zealand, double back to Fiji after the hurricane season, and then continue on round the world. • THLALOCA, a 20 ft sloop with owner-skipper H. Zenker and his wife Segrid, arrived in Russell, New Zealand, on September 29 after a 21-day voyage from Suva.

Mr, and Mrs. Zenker, who are naturalised Canadians of German origin, left California in 1962 on a Pacific cruise. They intend to work in New Zealand until they start a return voyage to Canada in February. • ULULANI, 63 ft ketch with Ben Moore, an American school teacher, arrived in Sydney on Dctober 25 after travelling 20,000 niles from Los Angeles.

Mr. Moore, who is 51, used to each physical training at a school n Michigan. When he reached his >oth birthday, he decided not to do vhat most people do—“sit back and ake life as it comes”. So he bought Jlulani and set out to see the world, n doing this, he visited Honolulu, 7 anning Island, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, 4ew Zealand, Lord Howe Island and Irisbane. Now he’d like to settle n Australia. • KOONYA, 39 ft Sydney yacht, iwned and skippered by 41-year-old .es Squires, returned to Sydney in November after completing a 15,000 ule voyage to Los Angeles and back, duch extended over three years.

On the way over, Squires called t New Zealand; and on the way ack, he put into Tahiti and sur punding islands, and Fiji. He had me crewmen during his wanderings.

Squires has now had enough deep rater sailing to last him for quite long while, but he plans to keep

Koonya (which he built himself) and use her at weekends.

“The trip was a great experience, but once is enough,” he says. “Sail ing hundreds of miles across open ocean is just plain boring.” • CREW CUT, 23 ft cutter, arrived in Auckland in September from New Guinea via the Solomons and Noumea. • NEOPHYTE, Lee Quinn’s 45 ft ketch crewed entirely by girls, was in Suva in late October preparing for a voyage to the New Hebrides. • SAMARANG, a 30-year-old American yacht with George Renfro and his wife Patricia, was due to leave Papeete for Honolulu in mid- November after a stay of several months in French Polynesian waters.

The Renfros left San Francisco on a long vacation in October, 1963, and are due back home in April, 1965. In French Polynesia, they visited the Marquesas, Leeward

Islands, some of the Tuamotus, and the islands adjacent to Tahiti.

They were disappointed in not being allowed to land at Mangareva, where American tourists—according to Le Journal de Tahiti —are looked on by the French authorities as “superfluous”.

Mangareva is in the vicinity of Mururoa Atoll, where the French plan to hold nuclear tests soon. • WANDERER, 96 ft topsail schooner, which was wrecked at Rangiroa Atoll, in the Tuamotus, on November 1 (see p. 76) is expected to be a total write-off, but Captain Omer Darr, the schooner’s former skipper, left Papeete for Rangiroa on November 4 in the hope that the vessel could be saved.

• Cos A Nostra, 30 Ft

trimaran, which arrived in Rabaul from Japan in September, was still there at the end of October. Her crew of three—Tom Schulz, Doug

Bartlett, and Peter Wetzel—were waiting on charts so that they could go on a cruise to the Trobriand Islands.

The three men originally planned to sail round the world, but the New Guinea-Times Courier reporter on October 28 that they might sell their vessel in Rabaul because Wetzel, a schoolteacher, wanted to get back to schoolteaching. • TOR U , 40 ft American trimaran, which is sailing round the world with two honeymoon couples and a bachelor, left Suva for Aus tralia on November 10, after a fortnight in Fiji.

The crew comprises honeymooners Peter and Ann Campbell, and Peter and Jane Ibolt, and Bert Gunzel.

They sailed from San Francisco on July 4, and called at Honolulu, Pago Pago and Apia before reaching Fiji, where their first port of call was Levuka.

They plan to lay up in Australia until the end of the South Pacific hurricane season and then resume a round-the-world trip through the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Mediter ranean, and across the Atlantic.

Their aim is to reach San Fran cisco in June, 1966.

The crew make up a miniature United Nations.

Peter Ibold and his wife are American, Peter Campbell is Irish, lis wife is Welsh, and Bert Gunzel is Uerman. • MAYLIS, Papeete-based motor /acht, which was chartered in Sep ember to take a party of American cientists to some of the surrounding slands, arrived off Pitcairn Island on October 6 with engine trouble.

A party of Pitcairners, who went >ff to meet the vessel, trailed a ine from their boat on the way out n the hope of catching a barracuda —and caught, instead, a big marlin yhich made off in the opposite lirection with their bait and line.

A battle followed to hold the rionster, but the marlin won after iving his adversaries a couple of airs of scorched hands.

On reaching the Maylis, the 'itcairners took her in tow and rought her to an anchorage off iounty Bay. Some of the visitors, icluding Dr. Harald Rheyder, a marine biologist from the Smith 3nian Institute, Washington, later 'ent ashore, where they took part in concert to farewell three other isitors to the island, among whom 'as the Australian author Frank June.

Next day, while the Pitcairners

were preparing their launch to take the American visitors back to the May Us, the news spread that another yacht had been seen approaching the island. This proved to be the Railleuse, owned by Francis Mazieres, which left Tahiti in September for Easter Island to pick up some men who were left there several months a S°* The Railleuse anchored in the lee of the island and remained there

until late the following day when she moved round to a spot just off Bounty Bay. On October 12, most of the Pitcairn children and many of the adults went out to visit the yacht, but they found her pitching motion not much to their liking.

Railleuse sailed for Easter Island later that day, with the intention of calling at Pitcairn again on her way back to Tahiti if the winds were favourable.