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I think a few coronets have gone a long way. It may have even been a mate that went to three kings in one.

 

I have vague recollections of him telling me after a few rums in Whangarei cruising club. Although they're so hazy I cant be sure.

 

From memory it was completely unplanned, and they sailed north under kite with a possible underdose of blood in their alcohol system.

 

I may have 2 stories mixed up there. Not sure

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I think a few coronets have gone a long way. It may have even been a mate that went to three kings in one.

 

I have vague recollections of him telling me after a few rums in Whangarei cruising club. Although they're so hazy I cant be sure.

 

From memory it was completely unplanned, and they sailed north under kite with a possible underdose of blood in their alcohol system.

 

I may have 2 stories mixed up there. Not sure

A Coronet rings a bell, that may have been the boat, he did it twice according to the article.

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Manawa (Marauder)-went around NZ a couple of summers ago.

Thomson 8.5 completed the RNI a few years back.

Cool Change (Ross 8.5) RNI twice.

 

Adrian Hayter's book Sheilla in the wind (I think) is a great read. Pretty small too.

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a 23 ft wharram cat [similar to the one that crossed the tasman recently] was and perhaps still is the smallest cat to circumnavigate,, smaller boat , smaller problems particularly when sailing solo.

21 foot, a Wharram Tiki named "Cooking Fat" is the small cat that circumnavigated

 

rory_mcdougall.jpg

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Went to an evening at Panmure YBC about 35 years ago give or take a few years and the speaker had just returned from the US. He had sailed his Raven 26 from Wellington up to the west coast of the US. At one stage they got caught in sea fog in a shipping lane so no sleep, overtired and ended up on an open coastal beach. Thought they had done their chips but when they jumped over the side they were in waist deep water. Got ashore and found the nearest farmer who got a machine down to them at low tide dug a hole beneath the keel, strops underneath and put it on the back of a truck. Took the boat down the coast to the nearest marina Dryed her out, rewired and put her back in the water and off they went. I think the shipped it back to NZ.

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one almost won the ak to fiji 2 handed division,they admitted due to circumstances had to use auto helm at one stage so dsq

If they have rules that say you can,t use an autopilot when racing offshore shorthanded then that should be changed , as a safety issue especially when short handed, if you are wet cold hungry and tired 10 minutes below to recharge or check charts etc with an autopilot keeping the boat on track may save lives, ridiculous to penalize a boat for what may be required for good seamanship.

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Did you ever feel your little ship might let you down due to its size?

No, I didn't, but then I didn't have any extreme weather, a couple of 50 knot blows but not more.

This is a long time ago but I recall the main problem was running down wind. Being a little boat she was very subject to wind and sea and the downwind course would frequently yaw 20° either side of the course line. On one occasion in the Atlantic the yaw was so bad that the twin running headsails backwinded and broke both booming out poles. The only solution I could think of to the problem was to tack downwind. The miles added were not all that great and apart from solving the problem it added immeasurably to the comfort.

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'Tonga Bill'.

 

Bill Tehoko, known also as Tonga Bill, was my age and my best friend among the yachts in the anchorage here. He had little advice to give about my predicament other than to lend a sympathetic ear and advise me not to worry and “do what you feel and it'll work out just fine.”

Bill and his new French bride Nicole, that he found on the neighboring island of Reunion, lived aboard Mata Moana, a little 18-foot plywood and fiberglass sailboat he built himself on his home island in Tonga. The year before, he sailed it alone across the Pacific and Indian Ocean. He was the only modern Tongan voyager I ever heard of but I wasn't surprised he was here on his tiny boat, since his Polynesian ancestors were the greatest seafaring people in the world a thousand years ago. The truly surprising thing is that there are not more Polynesians sailing the seas. Bill supported himself working as an artist, doing carvings and sculpture and making jewelry from whatever was at hand. Nicole and Bill often came aboard Atom for dinner with me and Dolores, where there was more room to stretch out than on their little boat.

One of the many humorous stories Bill told was about a Swedish Navy boat that invited him aboard for dinner in some remote Pacific port. The captain was impressed by Bill's voyages alone in his small craft and asked him to speak of his experiences to his officers. At dinner, the curly-haired, dark-skinned Tongan said in a straight face, “Did you know, captain, that I am part Swedish?” With that he had everyone's attention. After noting the raised eyebrows, he continued, “Yes, my grandfather ate the first Swedish sailor to land in Tonga.” Bill said the Swedes didn't know whether to laugh or throw him overboard.

Bill's four-horsepower outboard motor was even less reliable than Atom's inboard motor, so we decided to build a sculling oar for each of our boats. This way we could at least maneuver our boats in and out of calm harbors if the engine was not working. Bill picked out two planks of African hardwood at the lumber shop that we shaped with handsaw and plane into 14-foot oars. For a finishing touch, Bill carved an auspicious Tongan motif along the blade of my oar. After practicing the twisting figure-eight sculling motion with an oarlock on Atom's transom, I was able to propel the boat across the harbor at about one knot; not fast, but dependable when the wind went too calm to sail.

Bill and Nicole were preparing to depart in Mata Moana for a voyage up the Red Sea to France, a hard trip even in a much larger boat and I worried to myself about their fate. On the morning of their departure, Dolores and I escorted them out of the harbor with Atom. With blustery trade winds astern we sailed side-by-side several miles out to sea, gliding over the waves like two wandering albatross. The twin jibs set out from Mata Moana's tiny mast contrasted starkly with the empty sea ahead. The contrast grew even sharper as we waved farewell and turned Atom back to Grand Bay. The next time I looked back they were a spot on the horizon and then they were gone.

Ten years later, when I met them on Reunion Island during my second circumnavigation, I found out that they had encountered a storm off Madagascar, had taken some damage to their boat and diverted to the Seychelles where they lived for several happy years before returning to live on Reunion Island.

 

Words and pic courtesy of the free online e-book 'Across Islands and Oceans' by James Baldwin.

Tonga Bill Mauritius.PNG

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often wonder about the great sea masters of yesterday,Polynesians,Maoris etc why we very rarely seeing any sailing or crewing,yet see plenty out in runabouts that imo shouldn't of left the beach.

 

Why have they given up on what their ancestors did?

 

Thanks Zozza must see if the library has a copy

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in "2 years before the mast"

 

dana speaks well of sailing abilities of the sandwich islanders (hawaians)

 

 A considerable trade has been carried on for several years between California and the Sandwich Islands, and most of the vessels are manned with Islanders

 

 by whatever names they might be called, they were the most interesting, intelligent, and kindhearted people that I ever fell in with. I felt a positive attachment for almost all of them; and many of them I have, to this time, a feeling for, which would lead me to go a great way for the mere pleasure of seeing them

 

Old “Mr. Bingham” spoke very little English—almost none, and neither knew how to read nor write; but he was the best-hearted old fellow in the world. He must have been over fifty years of age, and had two of his front teeth knocked out, which was done by his parents as a sign of grief at the death of Kamehameha, the great king of the Sandwich Islands. We used to tell him that he ate Captain Cook, and lost his teeth in that way. That was the only thing that ever made him angry. 

 

 ........He had been to sea from a boy, and had seen all kinds of service, and been in every kind of vessel: merchantmen, men-of-war, privateers, and slavers; and from what I could gather from his accounts of himself, and from what he once told me, in confidence, after we had become better acquainted, he had even been in worse business than slave-trading. He was once tried for his life in Charleston, South Carolina, and though acquitted, yet he was so frightened that he never would show himself in the United States again;

 

check out the reference to nz kanaks eating people

 

http://www.bartleby.com/23/19.html

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Peacekeeper (Carpenter 29) did the Auckland -Suva race a few years back. They are rock solid boats with a really good strong rig on them. I think Stormy Dawn did the round North island too. They would easily handle an off shore cruise.

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Very interesting. I have done several thousand miles in a Chico 30 called Auriga - Suva, Vila, across the Tasman and back for a Hobart race and numerous Akl-Gisborne and White Island races. At that time there was a large number of 30 foot ocean capable yachts in Auckland. A well founded Chico 30 would be about as good as you can get in that size if offshore is where you want to be ... and you can park them close to the settlement at Lord Howe island for the Friday Night Fish Fry ... if the fancy takes you.

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That book looks awesome Zozza. It's on my list too now :)

 

When I was buying my boat I had look into a Jouet 24 for sale up in Weiti. She needed some love on the exterior (hadn't been touched in a few years, so she'd grown a reef, running rigging was dead and standing rigging was questionable), but the interior was apparently pristine (I didn't end up having a look). she'd been sailed here from Denamrk in the late 80's. over the course of researching her I discovered more of the story, unfortunately mostly not in English: http://www.ontdekkingsschrijver.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/WimvanDijk.pdf you can google "Asfaloth Jouet 24" for more.

 

My Stratus is faster than her but she was seaworthy. I will admit I experienced some regret choosing the Stratus -- I did have some fantasies of travelling the world in the Jouet, something I'm less confident to do in the boat I chose. Realistically, though, my goals right now are local racing, so the Stratus was the better choice. I'll get my ocean cruiser another day...

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