STRANGE CRUISE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 November 1938, Page 7

STRANGE CRUISE

WOMAN’S ADVENTURES TWO YEARS IN YACHT. SUCCESSION OF CAPTAINS. After’ a series of happenings so bizarre that her owner and navigator, Mrs Marion Rice Hart, finds it difficult to believe they really occurred, the 73ft ketch-rigged auxiliary yacht Vanora arrived at Auckland the other day on a world cruise which began two years ago. It will finish when Mrs Rice Hart is tired of her wanderings. The Vanora will stay at Auckland for probably a month and will then sail for New York by way of Cape Horn, Mrs Rice Hart is an American who is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was formerly a research worker for a large American electrical company, was once arrested during the Great War while on a geological survey of the West Point Military Academy sector and was held as a spy until her identity was established, and more recently has spent several years as a sculptor. DECISION TO BUY A YACHT. Her ownership of the Vanora dates back to a day over two years ago when she was at Montfavet, in France. “I was tired of being responsible for so many things and people,” Mrs Rice Hart said yesterday. “I wanted to lead a carefree gipsy life and drift about the world, going where I pleased, with no cares or troubles, contemplating me works of God.” She decided to buy a yacht. She had never done any small-boat sailing in her life and knew nothing of practical navigating. Her search for a suitable vessel led her first of all to Cannes, then to England, on to the United States and finally back again to England, where the Vanora was discovered at Cowes. The yacht had already made one world cruise under the same name as the possession of Lieutenant-Commander W. F. Hollins, R.N. It did not on that occasion visit New Zealand.

Mrs Rice Hart bought the yacht for something over £7OO and spent several hundreds more on fitting her cut. To save money, she, a nephew, Mr Paul Perez, who is making the cruise with her, a Greek woman doctor of philosophy and a young English sculptor and his wife did the work of chipping, scraping, painting and generally getting the Vanora ready for sea.

DISMISSAL OF CAPTAINS. The cruise started from Cowes in August, 1936. At that stage Mrs Rice Hart had no intention of doing her own navigating, but instead, she said, looked forward to the comfortable and lazy life of an ownerpassenger. The dismissal of her first licensed captain because he was going to take the yacht to sea with rigging so rotten that it came apart at a pull did not shake her faith •in the kind of life she expected to enjoy on such a cruise. Mrs Rice Hart’s second master mariner set sail for Brest. He was slightly surprised, she said, when the port he. reached proved to be Binic, Baie de St Brieuc,. Another captain who was engaged, a Rumanian, could not sail after all because his wife would not let him, and still another was dismissed after it was found that his ship’s log consisted of thermometer readings. Finally, Mrs Rice Hart decided to become her own skipper. She said yesterday that she had learned navigation from books as she went along, and so far the Vanora had escaped shipwreck. Her crew had changed from time to time and Mrs Rice Hart had stopped one or two fist fights among some of those who had gone. In addition to herself and her nephew the other member of the original crew who arrived at Auckland is Mr John Smith, from Bath, who acts as cook. Her engineer is a Greek, Emanuel' Papadimitrius. Two New Zealanders helped to bring the Vanora to Auckland from Noumea, her last port of call. They are Messrs Leonard Clarke and R. Findlayson, who left Auckland some months ago as members of the crew of the Auckland yacht Seaward, which has just returned from a Pacific cruise.

Mrs Rice Hart did not at first intend to come to New Zealand. After sailing through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal ana calling at Aden, Ceylon, the Natherland Komodo Island, where the crew hunted giant lizards, New Guinea, and New Caledonia, it was intended to avoid the typhoon latitudes and sail back to New York by way of Tahiti and the Panama Canal.

OFF COAST FOR FIVE DAYS. “We suddenly decided it would be fun to sail through the Straits of Magellan,” said Mrs Rice Hart, “and so we came on down from Noumea to New Zealand. We have been on the" coast trying to get into Auckland for the last five days, and we have spent 19 days coming from Noumea.” t The yacht was becalmed off North Cape on October 15 and last Monday it was hove-to to escape the fury of a southerly storm. Mrs Rice Hart said they almost went on to the Hen and Chickens and so on Tuesday morning they put out to sea. The only chart Mrs Rice Hart has is one for the whole of the New Zealand coast and, consequently, navigation to Auckland was done very carefully. The yacht passed Tiri Tiri at four o’clock on Saturday morning and anchored for the night, being towed in yesterday afternoon, assistance for which the owner said she was very grateful. “And now,” said Mrs Rice Hart, “we find it is a Sunday with a holiday tomorrow. We have plenty of food on board, but none of it is fresh. We also have some money, but it is French francs from Noumea. So what do we do until the banks and the shops open?” However, Mrs Rice Hart very quickly found assistance from relatives of. one of the New Zealand members of the crew.