schooner 'Valrosa'

It was a quick death for the schooner 'Valrosa'

In October, 1965, Valrosa, one of the best-known schooners in the South Pacific, a solid, 62-year-old, 99 ft two-master, hit a reef in the Tuamotus. She died in 100 minutes.

PIM told the story of her passing in December, 1965; of how she put out from Rangiroa, largest island of the Tuamotus, on a charter cruise with tourists and local people on board, encountered bad weather and, 10 hours after leaving Rangiroa, ran on to Tikahaou reef at 4 a.m. on October 25. Three crewmen risked their lives taking a steel cable from the ship to the reef, then ran a shuttle service in the lifeboat to get those on board ashore. Not a life was lost.

There were rumours current in Papeete that the ship was deliberately wrecked for the insurance; that she was rotten, a floating grave.

That was more than six years ago.

Now meet the man who was at Valrosa s helm when she struck the 'eef Australian Des Kearns, then a H-year-old.

Valrosa was one of six craft which lelped Keams to sail round the world md then write a book on his six £ar, 100,000 mile odyssey— World Vanderer, 100,000 miles under sail. nis is how Valrosa died.

“I was alone with the helm, the sa and the long heaving deck. A amt white light threw life onto the rass compass and binnacle before ie. A fraction west of sou-west was ie course. The heavy rain made the amish work and spars glisten. The r w ?s swollen with freshness and ie wind moaned aloft. Up forward e long forefoot snored along, while e foaming seas kept endless race. i a,m - Dick had just gone dow after seeing nothing ahead, aen , there was the most credible vision—a flash of white id the silhouette of a coconut tree

directly ahead of the bowsprit. It was that same reef that for generations sailors had glimpsed before their destruction. In those few remaining instants you try and imagine what it is going to be like.

I spun the wheel hard’a’starboard and, though I don’t remember saying it, yelled to the skipper, Marc Darnois, who was sleeping just inside the after coachhouse, ‘Marc, Marc I can’t believe it!’

“Next I remember the images of dark waves beside the ship, being picked up on the sea, and finally the agonizing crunching and grinding sounds as the vessel came to rest on the coral with the deck towards the shore and the keel to weather. The helm spun like a chocolate wheel as the rudder grounded, sheering off the wormgear steering and at the same time ejecting the magnificent scroll-work panel into the air like a

champagne cork.

At first Marc and I were the only ones on deck. A few streaks of light showed the outline of the stricken Valrosa /ying over on her side. We knew she was finished.”

The accusations that the ship was deliberately wrecked, Keams dismisses m one line. Obviously, he had a clear conscience. And Pan-Am senior pilot Hugh Gordon seemed to have no doubts of his innocence, either. He signed Keams up in Tahiti as master of the two-masted schooner Monsoon, to sail her to Honolulu. That voyage was uneventful.

Not so the trip he made in the Sydney-based 30 ft Carmen-class sloop Carronade around the Horn in the wake of Chichester. Not many yachties can boast of rounding the Horn and fewer still of being rolled in the process.

In his six years voyaging, Kearns sailed in three more ships the famous Grand Banks fishing vessel Bluenose 77—20 knots in a Gulf Stream battle the three-masted barque Carthaginian, and racing champion Ondine.

He came home in Ondine and that story is still remembered. It was 1968. Ondine was on her way from Greece to Sydney for the Sydney- Hobart Yacht Race. She was driving at nine knots in the Southern Indian Ocean when her 99 ft mast cracked and went over the side. Ondine, racing against time in what seemed a forlorn hope of making Sydney for the race, made it with a jury rig with only four days to spare. A new mast was flown out from Germany. At noon on Christmas Eve Ondine had her new mast and a few days later was first over the line up the Derwent River. Kearns got married a few weeks later, to a girl he had met in Gibraltar, one of Ondine’s calling places. He had $6O in his pocket proceeds of a sale he made of Ondine’s old mast stump!

Kearns, an ex-trainee executive is an experienced sailor. He is also a facile writer and an observant one and one doesn’t need to be a yachting enthusiast to enjoy his yarn, although it helps. He is also a good photo grapher. The 88 photographs in the book—they’re not all his, however—

JC.

make his telling easier.-

UNDER II ?* D^ ER ’ 100,000 MILES UNDER SAIL. By Des Kearns. Angus & Robertson. $4.95.) s

"Valrosa", photographed at Rangiroa as she was leaving on her last fatal voyage, only a few hours before she became a total wreck.