A PERILOUS VOYAGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2656, 8 November 1923, Page 4

A PERILOUS VOYAGE.

CUTTER CROSSES ATLANTIC.

TENNIS PLAYER’S FEAT.

A thrilling story of adventure and hardship is told by M. Alain Gerbault, the French lawn tennis player, ’who., succeeded in the perilous task of crossing the Atlantic alone in a ,30ft. 10-ton cutter. M. Gerbault, who landed at Fort Totten, Long Island, started from Cannes on April 5. I told nobody, he said, that I was going to America. To all my friends .but one I. said I was going to England on a short trip. My one confidant supplied me with sixty pounds of salt beef, thirty-six tins of condensed milk, sixty pounds of sugar, ten pounds of ten, thirty-five poun.dp...of. ship’s biscuits, and six-ty-five gallons of distilled water. My first goal was Gibraltar. As my boat is a cutter, and has only one mast and a long boom, it was difficult for one man to work. The second day out I struck bad weather in the Gulf of Lyons. Strong gales blew for forty-eight hours, then dropped as suddenly as they sprang and for days there was not a breath of air. I finally reached Gibraltar.

Fr6m Gibraltar I set my course straight for New York, following the old sailing routes used by Columbus and afterwards by the pirates, who sailed the Spanish main. Shortly afterwards I ran into another storm losing my good weather sails, while the roller boom which had been repaired at Gibraltar was hopelessly broken. All day, and all night I worked repairing the mainsail. For the. next 1,500 miles I struck fair winds and moderate seas. With fine following winds I went for a week without touching the tiller. Then disaster overtook me. One morning I awakened to find a peculiar smell in the locker where the water was stored in ten-gallon jars. I discovered that two-thirds of the water had gone bad because the jars were improperly cleaned when the water was placed in them. After anxious calculation I determined that with luck I could pull through if I rationed myself to one cup a day. My staple diet at this time was potatoes, which are delicious when boiled in sea water in their skins. ,

Except for the loss of the water, everything went ideally for the next thousand miles. Sometimes I fished for bonitas, twenty or thirty pound monsters with harpoons. •Sometimes as I fished over the side of the boat I nearly fell asleep in the -soft warm winds. But once again Nemesis descended upon me. My carefully-prepared wind chart, which indicated that the winds should be following for the rest of the voyage to New York proved to be wrong. Within forty-five minutes the wind from being astern began to blow in the opposite direction, followed by fourteen days of calm. Then there were terrific squalls and rain. There was a foot of water in the cabin and the pump broke. The water rose higher and higher. As fast as I baled it out it came in again. On the fifth morning of the downpour I developed fever and a sore throat. On the seventh my temperature rose to 104 degrees, and I became unconscious. When I awoke about fifty-four hours later everything was awash. Then came the worst period of the whole voyage. For twenty-six days gales and winds blew with unprecedented force. Every day and almost every hour something fresh was broken. One day I ventured on deck and noticed an enormous wave rushing towards the boat. I was just in time to climb the rigging when the wave broke with tremendous force. The whole boat disappeared, entirely engulfed, ill .the sea. Tons of water thundered overhead. Then the wave passed and. by a miracle the ship righted, h^self. M. Gerbault said that eighty-four days opt he. fell in with the Greek steamer Byron, which provisioned him and gave him medical supplies. Then he sighted the Henrietta, of Boston, and secured from her fresh meat and fruit. Seven days later lie. sighted the American const ami fetched.up at Fort Totten, after going eighty hours without sleep.