Yachts

Jane Deridder Re

ports from Honolulu.

• HORIZON. Southern Califor nia aerospace engineer and regis tered nurse Earl and Betty Hinz were in their mid-50s when they sold their Cal 30 racing sloop, bought their centre cockpit Morgan Out Island 41 cruising ketch Hori zon and set off to cruise the Pacific on writing assignment to Sea maga zine. “Go now. Sail soon. Go before it’s too late,” is the theme of Earl’s book. Sail Before Sunset (published by David McKay, NY, ’79), the story of their 17,000-mile, two-year, cruise. Earl’s second book. Landfalls of Paradise, five years in the writing, is a cruising guide to the Pacific islands pub lished in 1980 by Western Marine Enterprises, Ventura City, Califor nia. Now the Hinzes are off on another cruise, this time to the Line Islands and perhaps the Cooks, and “what we didn’t see before. It depends on weather ...” Crew member for their voyage is 19-year old Roy Shepherd, a student of oceanography who already has two trans-Atlantic and two Hawaii mainland crossings to his credit.

• HEARTBEAT. “A worthwhile experience that changed my life,” is what Gary Green says of a two week ordeal in a life raft with three other people after a Peterson 44 which they had just picked up in Taiwan sank in 1973 after a series of misadventures. The story is told in Satan’s Eye by Robert Mclntyre (Hodder and Stoughton, 1975).

“I’d never again consider delivery of a production boat,” Gary vows.

Seven months later, Gary Green was back in his native New Zealand building a sloop of his own a steel Alan Mummery-designed centre cockpit prototype of a 13 m design Gary calls the Southern Ocean class, a four-year building project, from what he calls “a superb set of plans”. As soon as Heartbeat was launched, Gary set off for the tropical islands of the Pacific. Gary can be seen in the Bounty movie filmed in Moorea.

He is one of four pigtailed loyalists in Bligh’s longboat. With a crew of two girls, Gary wintered in Hawaii prior to setting off in Heartbeat for North America via Japan and perhaps Vladivostok, where he hopes to meet again friends from the Russian fishing fleet who res cued him and his companions nine years ago.

• MILROSE. “You grow from an experience; adversity makes you a better person,” says Rosemarie Wooley about a near fatal brush with hurricane Veena in Tahiti on April 12 of last year. Milrose, a Sea Wolf 40 ketch, Millard and Rose marie Wooley’s cruising home since 1973, was driven up on Maeva Beach and holed along with dozens of other vessels. The Wooleys took six months to mop up, dry out, sort out, repair and make seaworthy the Taiwan-built glass ketch which has taken them around most of the Pacific in the years they have been blue water sailors. Hongkong, the Philippines, the Carolines, New Guinea, the Solomons, New Cale donia, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Fiji, Australia, the Marianas, Japan, the Aleutians, British Columbia, west ern U.S., Mexico, Polynesia and Hawaii have all been their “back yard”. Millard, a navy fighter pilot for 27 years, and his Irish Rosemar ie sold their Lake Tahoe home after it was burglarised, deciding they’d rather roam than own even the most luxurious of houses. Rosemar ie, who is occasionally up to her armpits in engine grease, and has been known to fashion a new bearing out of fibreglass on her own at sea, says she will be content to spend the next year or so in Hawaii where Milrose arrived in January.

But already they are talking of the next voyage. “We’re thinking of Alaska next...” says Millard with a faraway look in his eyes.

Once shipwrecked, New Zealander Gary Green is thinking of visiting Japan on his own steel sloop, Heartbeat.

Earl and Betty Hinz, and crew member Roy Shepherd (in the bosun’s chair), ready Horizon for another cruise. Note solar panel. - Jane DeRidder photos.

Longtime blue water sailors Mil lard and Rosemarie Wooley en joy a well earned rest in Ala Wai yacht harbor, Honolulu.

• ESPERANZA. It’s always in teresting to meet the person behind the voice in amateur radio lingo, to “have an eyeball QSO”. Fred Boehme of the American yacht Esperanza whose call sign is KH6UY is heard on the ham bands regularly, often serving as Net Con trol for various maritime mobile nets (the Pacific Maritime Net on 21.404 MHz at 2200 GMT, the Seafarers Net on 14.313 MHz at 0300 GMT, and the Manana Net on 14.340 MHz at 1900 GMT). Before taking to the sea, Fred was in the construction business in California.

Dependent on weather, he made a study of it. When he moved aboard his 13 m Yankee Clipper Esperanza and began cruising he plotted weather systems to better interpret their movements. Now at the mic rophone of his Kenwood TS 430-S in the teak salon of his Taiwan-built,

Garden-designed ketch, he uses his weather sense to help yachts in passage. Fred and first mate Jo Lawlor left Honolulu in April for another swing through Polynesia, hoping to encounter many of the seagoing hams they have talked to but never met. Fred’s advice to fellow salty hams is, “Look to your antennas!” He says that the present sun spot cycle will bring at least three more years of poor propaga tion so that an efficient antenna system is becoming increasingly important. • ORIANA. Back in Palmyra La goon for the third visit in as many years were retired pharmacist Ed Atkin and his first mate Bernie Houston. They were enjoying a between-season period of rest, re cuperation and yacht maintenance.

Oregonians Ed and Bernie, who operate a charter service on their yacht Oriana out of the Sheraton Maui Hotel, appreciate the uninha bited lagoon where the only perma nent residents of the atoll other than the usual tropical island flora and fauna are three company-loving male dogs Army, Navy and Palmyra a trio left there as puppies following a defunct copra cutting operation.

(Now Ms Deßidder

gives us some of her

own news this time

from Southern Cali

fornia.)

• Magic Dragon. The 12 M

Canadian sloop Magic Dragon, en route from New Zealand to British Columbia, sailed through the cen tral Pacific visiting Vanua Levu in Fiji, the French island of Wallis, Kanton in the Phoenix group, and Palmytra in the Line Islands.

Though hard on the wind all the way, we were able to lay our course for all the shorter between-island hops. It was only while sailing from

Honolulu to California in February that we were headed by the wind and forced to tack. By keeping south of the high pressure ridges we managed to avoid the procession of North Pacific winter storms and gales to make the windward cros sing in 21 uneventful days. Magic Dragon carried tidal data in the form of punch tapes from Kanton Island (formerly Canton) to the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii where Dr Klaus Wyrtke is doing research on sea level variations in the Pacific equatorial regions.

Harry and Marie Smith, owners of the beautiful Polaris 43, Lematu, have sailed from Ma juro to Kwajalein with Pat Mun ro on board as crew. They planned to be on Kwaj. for about a month and then return to Majuro for a few weeks before heading south for Fiji by way of Tarawa, Abemama, and Funafuti. Lematu is a Caroli nian name meaning "across the reef and beyond."

Fred Boehme and first mate Jo Lawlor aboard Esperanza.

Michel and Jane DeRidder at Kanton Island, Kiribati.

Ed Atkin and Bernie Houston feed coconut to the only three non-indigenous inhabitants of Palmyra Atoll three male dogs named Army, Navy and Palmyra.

Intrepid is the word for Bill Dunlop, American single-hander from the state of Maine. Picture shows him readying his 2.7m yacht Wind’s Will as he left Papeete harbor on June 8 headed for Australia. He expected the journey to take eight to 10 weeks.

On his sail are inscribed a map of Maine and the words “Maine - Where Legends Live.” - La Depeche de Tahiti photo.