TASMAN YACHT RACE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 88, 8 January 1935, Page 9

TASMAN YACHT RACE

Te Rapunga’s Crossing

Safe at moorings at St. Kilda pier after their strenuous and adventurous ocean voyages from New Zealand and Tasmania, the crews of the yawls Te Rapunga, Phyllis and Oimara were hardly recognisable as the same men who on/he previous day brought their tiny vessels up the bay at the finish of the Tasman Sea and Bass Strait ocean races, says the Melbourne “Herald.”

Sleep had removed the lines of tiredness, and clean shaves had left them more youthful and more sunbronzed.

With the failure of the Ngataki to arrive on the morning after her rival, Te Rapunga (Captain George DibLern) became the absolute winner of the Tasman centenary race from Auckland to Melbourne, for a prize of £7O and the £5O cup presented by the AkaIrana Yacht Club, Auckland.

Oimara (Captain F. J. Bennell), on- her handicap, was declared official winner of the Bass Strait race, although Phyllis (Captain D. R. Oxley) actually arrived first by a narrow margin.

Captain Dibbern, of Te Rapunga, described how after leaving Auckland his boat commenced to leak, and he put into Russell for repairs, thereby losing 44 hours. “When we got out to sea from Russell again she started to leak again—this time about a bucket an hour—but we decided to carry on,” he said. “We drove her as hard as we could, and one day we did 186 miles—good going for a small boat. “Even in light breezes we made five or six knots. We rigged every possible sail, and once we had 10—all the bits and pieces the boat carried. Gunter Schramm, our navigator and cook, looked after us well, and on Christmas Day, which was fine with favourable winds, he gave us tongue, asparagus, duff, fresh potatoes and beer. “We ran into rough weather in Bass Strait. The winds were un- i favourable, and we broke a stay, buti repaired it and pushed on. All the I time the fear of losing the race was| driving us hard. When the weather.’ was fine we had a swim over the side,) keeping a keen lookout for sharks. “Off Cape Schanck the wind dropped in the afternoon, and we were be-! calmed until next morning. Then it; sprang up from the south-east, and' took us into Port Phillip without further incident.”