WORLD CRUISE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 144, 21 June 1939, Page 14

WORLD CRUISE.

IN 70-TON SCHOONER.

HUSBAND, WIFE AND BABY.

GIRLS RUSH JOB OF NURSE.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 17. An interesting visitor to Sydney this week is the 70-ton schooner AMo, in ■which the owner-skipper, Captain Ahto Walter, an Estonian, and his American wife, with their 22-month-old son Teddy, are sailing round the world. They arrived in Sydney after a passage of 14 days from Xew Caledonia. Mrs. Walter, wlio helongs to Greenwich, Connecticut, met the skipper wTien Tie was living only two doors away from her home there, while writing 'hie hook, "Racing the Seas." Eighteen months later they were married and went to Nassau in a 27-foot cutter for their honeymoon. They crossed the Atlantic again in a ketch, hut went hack to Antwerp by steamer, and flew to Helsingfors in Finland and then to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. There they bought the Ahto and set out on their wanderings. Between the chart-room and their own cabin they fitted up a sort of a cage in which Teddycan play and sleep in safety even in the roughest seas. He has spent most of his 22 months of his life on the sea. Leaving Tallinn they sailed the Ahto back to Greenwich eight months ago, and then called at tlie West Indies, Panama, Marquesas, (Jalajiagos, Samoa, Fiji, Xew Hebrides and Xew Caledonia. From Sydney they are going to the Great Barrier Reef, Papua, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore. Colombo, and then round the Cape of (iood Hope back to America. Mixed Crew of Eight. Among tiie Ahto'w crew of eight are Englishmen, Canadians ami Americans. When it became known in Sydney that Mrs. Walter wanted two girls to sign on as nurses for Teddy for the rest of the voyage, she was swamped with applications. Hundreds of women applied for the job by letter and telegram from all over Australia, and a few even from Xew Zealand. Among those were clerke, typists, nurtres, domestics and an artiet. Two girls on holiday in Sydney from Melbourne and Adelaide respectively have been chosen, but as they have not yet obtained their parents' consent, their names have not been revealed. Captain Walter *aid that the applicants' ages ' ranged from 10 to over 40. : One of the nurses is being carried free, but the other is being asked to provide passage money, the amount of which has ' not been revealed. Captain Walter also 1 wants two seamen. They will have to : provide £250 as passage money for a ; voyage of at least 11 months,'will be I landed in Xew York, end will have to I find their own return passage money I home.