YACHTSMEN’S VOYAGE IN 28-FOOT CRAFT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 224, 10 December 1927, Page 13

YACHTSMEN’S VOYAGE IN 28-FOOT CRAFT

FINLAND TO AUSTRALIA A voyage from Finland to Australia in a 28-foot boat is being undertaken by two young Australians. Mr. Robert Kermode and Air. Frederick Cullenger. Both are members of St. Kilda (Melbourne) Dinghy Club, and call their boat the “Dinkum Aussie.” After many wanderings, Mr. Kermode wrote home, he and his companion found themselves in Finland. Seeing the boat lying at its moorings, they were seized with the idea of sailing her to England, thence across the Atlantic, and finally across the Pacific to Melbourne. “My friend and I,” lie remarks, “had been enjoying the beauties of Finland. The beautiful lakes, surrounded by the pretty silver birch trees; the huge forests of pine, ripe for the axe; the dashing rapids, down which the native boatmen ferry one through flying foam and rocks that appear to spring out of the water at the long craft that the tourists are carried in. “We had tired of the thrills of shooting the rapids and of the pleasures of visiting old buildings and battlefields, and were spending a few days in the quiet little village of Ruuma. One day, while walking through the forest that comes almost to the water’s edge around the harbour. we suddenly reached the shore of a quiet small cove, and had the first glimpse of our little’ ship.” , , The boat was bought and fitted out. Unaided the two Australians sailed her 1 500 miles down the Baltic via Copenhagen ac ross the North Sea, and arrived at St. Monan’s, Scotland, where the craft is laid up for the winter. Thus the first stage of the long vovnge has been successfully accomnlished Mr. Kermode intends to start again in the spring for the trip across j the Atlantic.