HACKSAW BLADE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 16, 20 January 1933, Page 5

HACKSAW BLADE.

IMPROVISED SEXTANT.

Fred Rebelle, a middle-aged Latvian, wlio is reported by cable last week to have reached San Pedro (Calif.) in his 18ft skiff, the Elaine, left Sydney so quietly on the last day of 1931, with an old hacksaw blade as a sextant, that nobody took any notice of him. For 20 years he lived in Sydney, and was well known on the waterfront, making shipshape his tiny craft for the voyage he had planned to America and then to Riga, in his homeland. The Elaine did not even clear through the Customs, and at South Head signal station it was thought that she was only a fishing boat out for a short cruise. A boy accompanied Rebelle on the early part of the trip, but did not make the ocean, crossing. Rebelle crept up the coast by way of Port Stephens to Brisbane, and there commenced the long, lone-hand trip. He was not heard Of again till he furled his sail at Suva. He had no papers, but, like a nold seaman, persuaded the port officials to give him pratique. From there he sailed on to Honolulu, "shooting" the sun with a sextant which he had made from an old hacksaw blade. That, with a compass, comprised his stock of navigating instruments.