Cruising
pp. 82-83 · Read in the full issue
Yachts
• Amenities for international yachtsmen, needed in North Austra lia, are being set up in Townsville.
The Missions to Seamen, 70 Palmer Street, South Townsville (P.O. Box 1244), is headquarters, and has hot shower and telephone immediately available. Other amenities will later become available. They are not for local yachtsmen, who have their own clubhouse. • CUTTY SARK, 60 ft yacht with 10 on board, including the only girl in the race, came home last in the Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race.
She was the only overseas yacht to take part and lucky to be doing so; five months ago she was underwater for two days in Moreton Bay during a bad storm. The boat was badly pounded but survived the ordeal, although skipper Basil J. Fleming lost thousands of dollars worth of gear.
Captain Fleming told PIM: “The hospitality at Gladstone has been tremendous and I would encourage other cruising boats to participate In this annual event: although we came in last, as a cruising boat without racing gear we were given a tremen dous reception when we arrived at the finish.” Captain Fleming now plans to sail Cutty Sark either to Suva (in July) or to Japan. • SAH AM A, small yacht, called in at Betio Harbour, GEIC, on April 9 to repair her engine. The yacht was manned by American, Jack J. Ross, one Englishman and a Japanese who gave a karate demonstration ashore by flattening a 44 gallon kerosene drum with a single blow. • OMICRON paid a very quick visit to Majuro early March. Canadian single-handed skipper, David Field, was told without an entry permit, he couldn’t stay. So he turned and sailed away. Two, more fortunate, yachts in Majuro in March were KITTI WAKE, with Ed Boden, in from the GEIC, and YO-HO-HO, Norman Davidson, from Hawaii, Both Ame ricans work for the TT Government. • ARGO, 28 ft. Swedish sloop being sailed round the world by Jan Kristensson and Sven-Ake Afsenius and which arrived at Rarotonga recently from Bora Bora and Aitutaki,
was hauled out of Avatiu harbour in March for careening. Both men, have obtained jobs as schoolteachers, Jan at the Teachers Training College and Sven at Tereora College. They intend to stay in Rarotonga for a few months. e RAH A, small sloop, arrived Rarotonga March 31 from Tahiti with English lone-hander Richard S.
Taylor. She was en route to Tauranga, New Zealand on a delivery voyage for her owner who bought Raha in the UK. • MALAGUENA, 26 ft sloop with lone-hander David Thomas on board arrived Rarotonga April 4 from Tahiti and Bora Bora. Mr. Thomas, who visited Rarotonga and Aitutaki in 1968 in Malaguena, is currently researching child rearing in Polynesia and Melanesia. A New Zealander, he is a student at the University of Queensland, and plans to visit Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, New Hebrides and the Solomons, returning to Brisbane in December. • WESTWARD, 99 ft schooner of the Oceanic Foundation, Hawaii, arrived Rarotonga March 4 from Rarutu with six marine biologists and archaeologists on board. Previous calls were Line Islands, Starbuck, Vostock, Caroline, Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie, Rapa, Bass, Mangareva and Oeno Islands. At Aitutaki biologists found four miles of dead reef, and crown of thorns starfish were seen feeding on live coral (see elsewhere). West ward left Rarotonga March 13 for Bora Bora, Tahiti and the Marquesas. • US trimaran REBEL is anchored near Kieta on Bougainville where owner Marvin Glenn is working on the copper project, • Carl and Loys Fristrom in wish bone ketch SANA, from Caloundra, are in Rabaul after a cruise from Brisbane through the Barrier Reef, across to Samarai and through the Trobriand Islands. They plan a cruise to the British Solomons next north west season. • KORONG, 39 ft concrete ketch from Southport, Qld., with John and Vicky Holmes, is anchored in Port Moresby for the south-east season.
John and Vicky will cruise throueh the Milne Bay islands to Madang in November. • SHI BUI, concrete NZ sloop, Shi Bui competed in the 1969 Sydney and Allan Wallis, son Robert and daughter Linda are back at work and school after their year-long cruise north along the Australian coast after Shi-Bui competed in the 1969 Sydney- Hobart race.
• Tahiti Ketch TANGARI, with owner Eric Kraak and crew Jeannie Wraight, left Port Moresby recently to sail back to home port, Sydney.
Also on the way back to Sydney and on to NZ is single-hander Bob Vernon
In Fascination.
• Other cruising yachts in Port Moresby in April include gaff ketch KARIE-L, ketch LAHARA, schooner PA VAN A and sloop MALULU. Off to SA soon are Steve and Karen Zador and baby son Zolan, in 32 ft Woolacott cutter
Windsong From Nz.
• FAI SIN, a 50 ft yacht with a crew of four, arrived in Papeete from Hong Kong early in April. The crew comprises Ted Harmer (owner-skip per), Bob Mehner, Kevin Kirk and Alan Thompson. The first two are Americans; the others, Australians.
Fai Sin left Hong Kong in July, 1970, and visited the Philippines, New Guinea, the Solomons and Samoa before reaching Tahiti, where the crew intend to stay for several months. Their plans are to go on to the Marquesas, Galapagos, Panama, Honduras, Jamaica and St. Thomas.