Yachts

Jane Deridder Re

ports from Noumea , New Caledonia: • PATINA. Bob White, retired department manager for Union Oil, is fulfilling a promise to his journalist daughter Kathleen by cruising with her in the family Cal 36 Patina. Ten months out of Costa Mesa, California, Patina was at the Cercle Nautique Caledonien (CNC) in Noumea in August. Here Marie White flew in to join the family. “My wife is not a sailor,” Bob explained, “but she meets us along the way.” Their son Bob Junior ar rived in Noumea seven years ago on the Cal 28 Passage bringing with him his own wind-surfer the first in New Caledonia. The wind-surfer created such interest he began importing them. Bob Jr met Martha Rossi, married her, started a family and a business, “Wind-Surfing Caledonien”.

Bob Sr sums up Patina s voyage to date; “We’ve moved a little too fast. We should have taken more time in the Marquesas, for instance, where we only stay ed 12 days.” Though the Cal 36 was designed by Bill Lapworth for racing, she has proved a fine cruising yacht. Bob added a tank in the keel to give an extra 46 gallons of water plus a little more stability. He had a sailing bimini made to shelter the roomy cock pit from rain and sun. “My best investment yet,” Bob said.

Patina’s longtime crew member, Brian Ettlin, joins the Montreal registered 13m schooner Belle Poule in Noumea to sail to Bris bane. There Eddie Siefred will be seeking crew for his wooden gaff schooner to continue a west ward circumnavigation. • LINDA E. A “Valiant 40” cutter Bob Perry-designed, she was built in Bellingham, Washington. Linda E of New Orleans, has been a cruising home to Dan and Dorothy Wil son for the past five years. Thirty years in diving, Dan began his working life as an abalone diver, eventually operating a small fleet of abalone boats out of Santa Barbara, California. He then got involved in providing support diving to exploratory oil drilling rigs worldwide. Wilson sold his company “Sub-Sea Intemation

al” to BP to go blue-water cruis ing with his wife Dorothy. Linda E carries a special diving ladder, a compressor, 60m of diving hose with underwater voice com munication capability. She is al so equipped with an NCS US built SAT NAV and a ham radio.

Dorothy is the licensed radio operator with the Louisiana call sign NSCTJ. When underway the Wilsons tow a propeller water generator which provides 8 amps at 7 knots.

• Count Phelax. This

yacht, from Waiheke Island, is named for Count Phelax of Luck ner, German seafarer, prisoner of war interned on Motohi in the Hauraki Gulf during World War I. She’s a “Hartley 26“ plywood vessel of Auckland registry tak ing lan Reid, his son Bruce aged nine, and a friend Ron Harding, on a Pacific cruise “to get away from the New Zealand winter.”

They are cruising in company with the New Zealand yacht Mainstay sailed by Larry and Fleur Rayner. Larry and lan went to school together. Count Phelax and Mainstay left Whangamumu together and arrived in Noumea within six hours of each other, having been on the wind all the way. Though they sighted each other only one night, they main tained a radio sked twice a day.

The two New Zealand yachts left Noumea in mid-July bound for Gladstone with plans of cruising the Barrier Reef and the Whit sunday group. • BIG BEAR H. Helmut and Anne Petrak of Vancouver have sailed 3400 km around the north and south Pacific in their schoon er-rigged “Down Easter 45”, Big Bear H, with Malaysian born Canadian, Tony Wong, as permanent member of the ship’s company, and with occasional hitch-hikers as crew. Tony cir cumnavigated in the late ’sos on the 19m US schooner Utopia.

Big Bear H was launched on Helmut’s 45th birthday. In the hotel/restaurant business since he was 13, Helmut built up his own $25-million hotel-restaurant chain which he sold to go blue water cruising. Now Big Bear H is heading back from Noumea to Hawaii where the Petraks have a home. “After working 16 hours a day seven days a week for so

much of my life, I’m getting restless and may go back into working life.” Also, Helmut admils to missing his family. The Petraks particularly enjoyed cruising in Western Samoa and in Fiji, though Fanning was perhaps their favorite island.

They grew to love the Gilbertese people. One of Helmut’s dreams is to one day share his knowledge of the hotel business with Pacific Islanders, who are just starting out in the tourist industry. Helmut’s amateur radio call signs are SWIDR and VK4BBH. He reports on the ham bands that the first leg of Big Bear's homeward journey from Noumea to Lautoka was a prolonged slog to weather in reinforced trades of 25 to 40 knots, a severe test for the girls who joined the vessel in Noumea, and for Helmut, who suffers from a painful back problem. • CONTINA. The name means “with bath tub”. And this “Cal 2-46” has an apartmentsized bath, great for Peter and Betty Eastman’s arthritis, though they seldom get a chance to use it these days on account of water

availability. Now in Noumea, the Eastmans have been cruising in a leisurely fashion for the past seven years. “We went to Papeete for two and a half weeks and stayed two and a half years!” Betty says the best time they had was after fetching up on a reef in Huahine. They stayed ashore with a Tahitian family while a cable-laying vessel with salvage experts, which just hap pened to be in the area, saw to the refloating of the 13.7 m motor sailer. Retired general surgeon Dr Peter Eastman, now in his late ’6os, is well known in the cruis ing community because of his medical guide, Advanced First Aid Afloat, now in its fifth print ing. The invaluable book, de signed “for those who venture beyond the range of immediate professional assistance”, was written for the Eastmans’son and young wife for their circumnavi gation on the 9.5 m sloop Wa.

Young Peter had requested a first aid book that doesn’t say, “Call the doctor immediately.” Dr Eastman obliged. One sentence reads, “. . . drop the amputated extremity into the bucket and

chuck it overboard.’’ Now on sale in Australia, Advanced First Aid Afloat is endorsed by the Australian Yachting Federation. (Published in 1972 by the Cor nell Maritime Press, Centreville,

Maryland.)

• PEPINA. German solo yachtsman Kurt Preister, out ward bound from Sydney on his 16m steel-hulled ketch Pepina, declared a Mayday and took to his inflatable dinghy off the New South Wales coast one night in early August. His distress call on the 40m ham band was picked up by ham radio operator VK3BKU who summoned Bruce Hender son, VK2DFH, a Sydney amateur active on the Maritime Mobile nets. Mr Henderson said that Kurt was able to give an exact position by reading the co ordinates directly off his SAT NAY. He says Preister reported “. . . hitting something. I don’t know what, but it was not a ship.’’ Henderson said that what ever it was, perhaps a semi submerged container swept off the deck of a container vessel in a storm, it apparently holed the smm steel plate at the bow, for

Preister reported Pepina was tak ing water fast in the foreship; the engine room amidship was flood ing, and he could not get the flood of water under control.

Preister’s flares were sighted and he was picked up off Coffs Harbour after 11 hours in his dinghy by the tanker Rosie D.

She was for a refinery south of Perth. Kurt flew to Diisseldorff from Perth. Kurt Preister had been cruising on Pepina for over three years. He’d just spent near ly a year north of the equator cruising in Alaska, British Col umbia, California and Hawaii.

Pepina cleared in to Australia in mid-May having come direct from Hawaii with only a short stop in Nukualofa for refuelling.

For his approach to the coast, Preister had jury-rigged an en gine fresh water cooling system using a coil of garden hose, and filling the bilge with salt water.

A spin-off from this ingenious improvisation was the loss of his beer supply. The aluminum cans stored in the bilge succumbed to

electrolysis and emptied their

contents. “And Germans must have their beer!’’ Kurt says.