Travellers' Tales

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 740, 18 September 1953, Page 17

Travellers' Tales

HEN the ketch Miru left Wellington at the end of May last year to take Dr. T. R. A. H. Davis to Boston for further study no one could guess that the voyage was going to last more than five months, The ketch struck bad weather almost immediately, Two days out and 100 miles from port she was hove to under mizzen and staysails and fighting a gale; another three days and she was into her second, with winds of 60 knots and breaking seas 30 to 40 feet high. One whole week out of the first three was spent hove to in storms. Aboard the Miru besides Dr. Davis were his wife and two children, and two young men, Bill Donovan and Neil Arrow. Mr. Arrow was responsible for sailing the vessel, and he said later that the storms encountered would make a yachtsman "seriously consider taking up bowls." He has now told his own. story of the trip in six talks recorded for the NZBS. Twelve Thousand Miles to Boston will be heard first from 3YA, starting on Sa Beemer 22, at 7.15 p.m. A travellers’ tale of a different kind is told in Journey into the Sun, a series of three talks about an English couple’s journey from England to Ceylon on their way to New Zealand, where they have now settled. Richard Hutchings, who tells the story, left Southampton with his wife in July, 1950. They took with them bicycles, a light-weight tent and’ sleeping bags, and’ for the first three months had the roads and fields of France and Italy as their only home. Mr. Hutchings describes those three months in "To the Riviera and Beyond," the first talk, which will be heard in the 2YA Women’s Session on Friday, September 25.