yachts

Jane Deridder Re

ports from Nadi Wa

ters, Fiji:

• LAPWING. Like migrating shore birds gathering in flocks, cruising yachts clustered in Nadi Waters in October ready to take off for points west and south as the hurricane sea son closed in. Among them was Lapwing of North Carolina registry.

Jeff Oakes earned the money to buy his Westsail 32 in Saudi Arabia working for Lockheed, teaching air craft mechanics in the Saudi air force all about care and maintenance of Cl3o planes. Jeff started out on Lapwing single-handed to sail around the world, but discovered it’s much more fun with a partner when a Canadian lass, from Tsawassen, B.C. joined him in Papeete. No stranger to boating, Cathy commer cial fished for several seasons off the west coast of Vancouver Island, part of the time with a lady skipper. So

not only is Cathy a trained navigator, she doesn’t get seasick. Cathy says one of their favorite ports of call was Niuatoputapu, “the old Tonga”. The isolated far northern Tongan island has been a port of entry since 1981 when its pass was blasted out. That year just one yacht called in; in ’B2 there were two; by October, there had been a couple of dozen in ’B3.

Word gets around. In Fiji, Cathy was trying to make the difficult decision whether or not to let her Apex fare plane ticket around the Pacific lapse in order to accept Jeff’s invitation to sail around the rest of the world. • FOREMOST. In Lautoka waiting for windvane parts and looking for

crew before he headed for Noumea and Brisbane was Tony Vick on his Sydney-registered gold-hulled Spark mans and Stephens-designed S&S 39 Foremost. A professional diver, To ny uses his vessel to get back and forth to jobs, but admits that it really is rather silly for him to have a boat; “I travel all over the place diving anyway and often have to leave it.”

He was thinking of putting the beaut ifully maintained yacht for sale in Southport, Queensland, while he went to the Auckland Islands south of New Zealand in a 30 m tug at Christmas to dive with Kelly Tarlton on the wreck of the General Grant.

They were looking for SUS 2 million worth of gold. • IRISH ROVER. Headed from Lautoka around the northern end of Viti Levu in October before leaving for New Zealand was the Peterson designed PC 44 cutter, Irish Rover. It was hard work for Larry Ivins and his crew of three short-tacking (between coral patches and sandbanks in the beaconed channel) against the trades which funnel and freshen between Vanua Levu and Viti Levu. But Larry has done a great deal of racing in the past, and enjoys taking the wheel and coaxing the utmost out of his yacht which probably explains why he has not installed a windvane self-steerer, a piece of equipment relied upon by most short-handed cruising sailors. One piece of gear Larry appreciates, however, is Sat

nav. “A tremendous time-saver,” he calls it, having served several times as navigator on Trans Pac Races.

Larry reckons a racing navigator can

spend as much as four or five hours a day navigating, what with dawn and dusk star fixes, as well as sun shots during the day. Larry’s wife will fly to New Zealand from their Rancho Palos Verdes, California, home to join Irish Rover for a cruise off the Bay of Islands. • MISTRAL 111. A miniature cruis ing yacht with not much more freeboard than most boats’ dinghies the 5.8 m Aussie yacht Mistral 111 creates a sensation wherever she goes. “I’ve been travelling since I was 11,” says Rex Byme. “I haven’t got a base.” Rex usually goes to Northern Queensland in the winter to cut cane. He’s travelled up and down the coast between Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef a few times in his

tiny fibreglass Hunter 19 (he bought

her secondhand in ’79), and says he has yet to find anywhere to equal the diving on the Barrier Reef, “the best in the Pacific”. Louise Wilson from Lord Howe Island, whom he met during a stopover in mid-Tasman en route to New Zealand, flew to Nelson to join Rex. The two young people hitch-hiked around the South Island, leaving the small yacht in Napier in someone’s backyard before continu ing up the east coast to the Bay of Islands, and thence to Tonga. Ton

ga’s Haapai Group provided them

with their most enjoyable cruising.

“They only see a couple of yachts a year there ...” But in Fiji it was Suva that Rex and Louise enjoyed most, a contrast to having been off the beaten track for so long. Rex has had to hand-steer a lot, or else slow the boat down to 60 miles a day in order to get Mistral to steer herself, and, he says “ Mistral is very wet!”

One day when he can get a larger boat, Rex says it will be of steel.

The miniature cruising yacht

Mistral ill is dwarfed by ding

hies from other vessels as fel low yachties come round to help Rex Byrne with plenty of advice about his self-steering gear. The meeting was off Mus ket Cove Yacht Club, Fiji. - Jane DeRidder picture.

(Above left) Jeff Oakes and Cathy Burkosky in Fiji waters sailing the US-registered Lapw ing. (Left) Cec Hayes helps Ken Bernard load his Zodiac dinghy in Fiji before he leaves for his single-handed crossing to Australia in his Pearson 30 Adelante. - Jane DeRidder pictures.

“You can’t beat steel for a sense of security. Hit a whale, hit a reef, and back off ...” Rex and Louise de parted Malolo Lailai in October for Noumea, then Lord Howe Island,

where they plan to spend the

summer. • MIRAGE. “I’m on a surfari,” says Tom Mailheau. “I want to surf as many places around the world as I can before I get too old.” Looking for surf with Tom on his 1928-built 8 m class yacht Mirage is Susan Back linie, trainer of exotic animals for the movie business lions and tigers. (She’s the girl who got eaten by a shark in the opening sequence of the movie Jaws.) “We have so many toys we haven’t room for anything else,”

Susan said. Mirage carries three surf boards, a windsurfer, three dive tanks and a compressor. So far the best surfing they’ve found has been off Malolo and Wilkes Passes in southwestern Fiji a break that “tubes out” (the surfer gets complete-

ly enclosed), and for “goofy-footed”

Tom, it’s “the ultimate a left break. It’s better than Hawaii, and there’s no one else there”. But he warns: “It’s a reef break, so not for novices!” Tom and Susan usually anchor at Namotu Island, a half-mile dinghy ride from Malolo Pass. Mir-

Canadian-registered Kemana has been cruising the Pacific for eight years, home to Brita and Nick Zeldenrust. The yacht is shown at left during its recent third visit to Fiji, just before heading for the Panama Canal and inland waterways of the Americas. - Jane DeRidder picture.

The surfer and the lion tamer: Tom Mailheau and Susan Back linie on board their 55-year-old

yacht Mirage. - Jane DeRidder

picture.