ADRIFT IN PACIFIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 184, 6 August 1934, Page 9

ADRIFT IN PACIFIC.

YACHT FROM SYDNEY.

FORTY-FIVE DAYS TO SUVA

LOST SAILS AND RTODERHEAD (From Our Own Correspondent.) • SUVA, July 31. The three-masted yacht Isobel arrived nt» last in Suva harbour after a voyage which occupied 45 days from Sydney. .Shu was leaking above and below, she had the anchor chain for a bowsprit stay, and her crew, weakened by a diet of plain (lour and water made into socalled dumplings, had had to man the pumps for 4o minutes out of very four hours. During the voyage the yacht los-t sail after sail, but the crowning mishap was the carrying away of the rudder head. Luckily four calm days allowed of its repair after a makeshift had also broken, leaving the vessel to drift "all ways at once," as one of the crew put; it. By tho aid of (i x 3 planks, carried as dock loud . a contrivance was made bv which with difficulty the crew steered her, ami this makeshift had to be used until Suva was reached.

For the first week out of Sydney most of the crew were seasick, and' this weakened them so that the lack of proper food later told upon them more than would otherwise have been the ruse. Driven north early by a gale, the ship later went near Lord Howe Island. Then she was sent over to Norfolk Island, and drifted past it in a dead calm, her crew

"M-">- fnuitic signals to attract notice. No one seemed to bo looking, and so the

" uiv sr.v the land fade away as they went further into the loneliness of tho Tasman Sea. After l><-iri"

Iniflotod buck and forward they were swept by the heavy nortli-noftli-enst •rale to the southward, and at Inst managed to get some part of the "trades," and. with calms intervening, at last sighted Fiji. By the. twenty-fifth day the provisions had shrank to fasting point, and all hands vvero put on rations of three biscuits a, day. At last the biscuits failed, and only plain Hour was left, although happily there was plenty of water. But there was no baking powder, so the flour and water constituted their daily allowance, and the daily spoils at the. pumps became a nightmare.

A mystery of the trip is the report by the Aorarigi. When she was supposed to have seen the lesobcl, between Suva and Auckland, that ship was close to Norfolk Island, and the crew say they never sighted any vessel except the' C.S.R. Company's Fiona.

The crew speak in the highest terms of Captain Stewart, who shared everything with the crew. They are young men, who signed on in the spirit of adventure, and they say they surely had it