"The Best Job In

The World"

CAPTAIN ANDY THOMPSON, one of the South Pacific’s last sailing schooner skippers, is known and loved by thousands of people throughout the eastern Pacific from Fiji to Tahiti. Now in his 80th vear and living in retirement in Rarotonga, Captain Andy was still in command until a short while ago.

This picture was taken on a trip from Palmerston Atoll to Aitutaki in 1959. After a 16-hour day working cargo off a tricky reef, Andy declared he had the best job in the world.

"Millionaires pay fortunes to take a few months’ schooner voyage through the islands and here I am doing it every day of the year and getting paid for it,” he said.

With his tremendous capacity to enjoy life, he sees the good in everything and everyone.

Andy came to the South Seas as a sailor from Boston 64 years ago. He married in Rarotonga and he and his wife Ngarangi have six sons. The eldest, Tony, is chief officer and frequently acting master of the New Zealand government’s cargo and passenger ship Moana Roa.—RON CROCOMBE.