LONG CRUISE ENDS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20012, 10 August 1939, Page 7

LONG CRUISE ENDS

VOYAGE OF VANORA ARRIVAL AT NEW YORK WOMAN OWNER'S VIEWS Impressions of a' 30,000-mile cruise round the world were given by Mrs. Marion Rice Hart, owner and skipper of the 73£t. ketch-rigged yacht Vanora, in an interview in the New York World-Telegram on her arrival at New York last month. Mrs. Rice Hart visited Auckland with the Vanora last year and, after a stay here of more than two months, left in December, taking Captain Duncan Matheson:, of Auckland, as sailing master.

"The only time I really was frightened on the entire trip," said Mrs. Rice Hart oni reaching New York, "was when we were coming into New Yoi-<k harbour. Those tugboats and the long strings of scows would, have scared me in earnest if I had been at the wheel. It certainly was more frightening than the Red Sea or Port Said, or the Straits of Magellan, where we had a terrible storm." Mrs*. Rice Hant explained that all her life she had wanted: to do unusual things. She recalled that her parents were surprised when she insisted upon leaving college and going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she took courses in chemical engineering. After working with the General Electric Company, she studied wood sculpture in London and settled down near Avignon, in France. She had been there six years when she suddenly decided to buy a second-hand! ship and go to sea. "The paint was peeling off her and she had o" lot of rust," said Mrs. Rice Hart, recalling how she found the Vanora 'after two years of searching for a "sufficiently tough-looking craft" in Cowes and New York. "Instead of spending a lew extra thousand, dollars on remodelling her, I got some artist friends to come to Cowes and help me. "Being at sea to her own ship gives ia woman a wonderful feeling of freedom," she commented. "On the way back from New Zealand I never was afraid for a moment —not after Duncan Matheson came on as captain "