SAILING ROUND WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 134, 8 June 1926, Page 10

SAILING ROUND WORLD.

OTTO PRAHL AND HIS SAMPAN.

ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE

STORY READS LIKE FICTION.

iFrom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 3. Captain Otto Prahl, who set off from Shanghai in a sampan months ago on a projected tour of the world, has arrived in Sdney after leaving the little craft stranded on a small island in the Torres Straits. He intends to continue his voyage in a similar craft, but his story so far is a romance in itself. Two men started from Shanghai with ' Prahl, but one of them had had enough by the time they reached Swatow on the Chinese coast. The next stage of the trip was to Hongkong, and most of the way the sampan was on the fringe of a typhoon. The rigging carried away, and a mast broke, but the vessel eventually made port safely, and docked for repairs. When the boat was 208 miles out on the trip to Manila, the mast carried away again, and they set a course for San Fernando, north of the Philippines. It was found impossible to make complete repairs there, so the voyage was continued to Yta, where two of the crew decided they had had enough thrills to satisfy them for the rest of their lives. One of them was brought back by the native constabulary, but he refused to go aboard again, and Prahl was forced to tackle the stage from Yta to Manila alone in the sampan. Prahl says little about that section of the journey, but it took 44 hours for a distance of 120 miles, and during that time he could not leave the tiller. From Manila he managed to get a crew to assist him, and- eventually reached Darwin, after thrilling adventures with the sea. At Darwin, Mr. Colin Dod, a Scotch Australian, was taken aboard, and he paid his passage to Thursday Island on the Queensland coast, living on a- diet of herrings and pork and beans during the run of twenty-one days. This journey was an exceptional performance, in view of the fact that an auxiliary schooner left two days after them and took two months on the same trip. At Thursday Island an Englishman, Raymond Poynton, joined the sampan, but they had gone only 100 miles when the vessel started to leak so badly that 3he had to be beached.

Temporary repairs were affected, but an exceptional tide left the sampan so high and dry that it wae found impossible to refloat her. The story of the trek by the two members of his crew across Queensland has already been told, as has also the fact, that Prahl was picked up by a lugger when his supplies were nearly exhausted.

Prahl, however, is still determined to continue his journey, as soon as he can procure another suitable lifeboat. In an interview in Sydney he stated he thought he might have some difficulty in getting a crew to accompany him, but since the publication of the interview, he has been overwhelmed by offers from adventure-loving men in Sydney.