Yachts

• DAUNTLESS: 15 m Stuart design sloop with owner skipper Frank Innes-Jones (Remuera, NZ), his wife Shirley, daughter Rosemary and son Rex on board, foun dered 167 km east of Norfolk Island on November 11 in a million-to-one mishap, a fight with a sperm whale, which rammed the yacht. The Innes- Jones family managed to launch their two life-rafts be fore Dauntless sank, and they drifted for about 20 hours until their Mayday call brought the Dutch freighter Nedlloyd Free town to their rescue. They were landed at Norfolk Island and later flew to Auckland.

Frank told the Norfolk Islander that the three whales, male, fe male and calf, were sighted at a safe distance but the calf made for the yacht for a closer look. The mother whale, prob ably sensing danger to the calf, rammed the yacht. Water poured in through a large hole, and blood spouted from the whale which, Frank believed, was mortally wounded. The bull whale joined in the attack.

Daughter Rosemary, who said the whale 'was coming at us like a train’, had a mirror in her hand. Despairingly, she threw it at the bull whale and was dumfounded to see the whale checked in his tracks. His tail went up as if to act as a brake.

He slowed down but the im petus was sufficient, when he touched the Dauntless, to lift the yacht nearly 2 m out of the water. They floated free of the whale but Dauntless was set tling in the water. The liferafts were launched but before they could be inflated, the bellows fell into the sea and began to float away. The blood from the wounded whale could have attracted sharks but son Rex, aged 24, dived in and retrieved the bellows. The Dauntless sank in 11 minutes.

As they drifted through the afternoon and all night Frank repeatedly sent out a Mayday

call on a ‘ham’ radio he had snatched up when they aban doned the yacht. The radio telephone had broken down. A ham operator in Dunedin (NZ) picked up the weak signal and the RNZAF began a search with an Orion which sighted the drifting rafts and directed the freighter to the spot. It was the family’s second ship wreck. Thirty years ago, Frank and Shirley, who was pregnant at the time, were returning to New Zealand in the coastal trader the Awahou from Suva where Frank had bought a large number of 44-gal oil drums. The Awahou hit a reef five days out of Suva but the drums kept her afloat until a United States cruiser arrived and rescued them.

Dauntless called at Fiji, New Caledonia and the New Flebrides during the cruise which began out of Auckland last May.

Below is more yachting news from Jimmy Cornell who has left Fiji and, early in December, was at Floniara. • WANDERER IV: Celebrities of the cruising world, Susan and Eric Hiscock, passed through Suva recently at the end of their latest Pacific cruise. Although originally from England, the Hiscocks are now based in New Zealand, from where they set off in 1978 for the Pacific coast of Canada, via Tahiti and Hawaii. After wintering in Bri tish Columbia, they sailed to California, Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji.

Well known to sailing people throughout the world as the author of several books and many articles, Eric Hiscock’s Cruising Under Sail and Voyaging Under Sail are classic works found aboard most yachts. Eric and Susan had been sailors in their youth before they married during World War 11. They started long-distance voyaging in 1950 on board WANDERER 111. In 1953 they arrived in the Pacific for the first time, meet ing no yachts at all in the Marquesas and only two in Papeete. On their return to the Pacific in 1960 the situation

wasn’t much changed and the Hiscocks look back with nos talgia at the wonderful attitude of the Islanders they met then.

On their many Pacific cruises over the years, the Hiscocks remarked both a change in the number and type of yachts, and also in the attitude of the Islanders towards them.

After completing two cir cumnavigations and 111 000 miles in Wanderer 111 they found a more comfortable home on Wanderer IV, a Van de Meer designed 16.50 m steel ketch built in Holland.

Wanderer IV has taken them a further 70 000 miles and on another circumnavigation.

With three Cape Horn pass ages to their credit and four Panama Canal transits, they still regard the Panama transit as the most hazardous part of their voyaging as the boat is not under their own control. ■l’m always glad to get back into the good old Pacific’, says Eric. Now approaching their seventies, the Hiscocks do not foresee any more long pass ages, but intend to carry on cruising near New Zealand.

• Chidiock Tichborne:

This is a 5 m long Drascombe lugger in which the American Chiles Webb is planning to make a trip around the world in the smallest boat ever. The two-masted boat, named after a little known Elizabethan poet, is completely open, very much like the ship’s boat in which Captain Bligh made his epic voyage from Tonga to Timor after the Mutiny on the Bounty. Another of Chiles Webb’s intentions is to follow the route taken by Captain Bligh and his men after having

been cast off by the mutineers.

Chiles Webb left San Diego in November, 1978 making the 3000-mile passage to the Marquesas in only 34 days, a good time even for larger boats. After cruising in French Polynesia he sailed in 16 days from Bora Bora to Pago Pago and then on to Vava’u and Fiji where he plans to spend the cyclone season. From Timor he plans to sail to India and up the Ganges to Benares, then via the Red Sea to the Mediter ranean and back to the USA,

some five years after his departure. Chiles Webb already has a solo circum navigation to his credit, achieved in 232 days, making it the fastest spin around the world for a singlehander in a monohull. If Chiles doesn’t have enough on his plate already, he is also talking about rounding Cape Horn in an open boat, similar to Chidiock Tichborne.

• Sundowner: New Zea

lander Peter McNeilly bought this 23 m steel ketch in Indonesia, where he worked for five years in Jakarta as a civil engineer. At the end of his contract in 1979, he set off for home with Peter Wilson, John Maindonald and Jo Johnson as crew, sailing via the Indonesian archipelago to Irian Jaya and the north coast of PNG, Sundowner made a longer stopover in Rabaul. The Solomons and New Hebrides were visited en route to New Zealand. A return to the tropics is planned for Sun downer after a cruise around South Island.

Chiles Webb and his Chidiock Tichborne. Photo Jimmy Cornell.