THE ADVENTURES OF A LAWN TENNIS COLUMBUS.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LII, Issue 8474, 20 December 1923, Page 6

THE ADVENTURES OF A LAWN TENNIS COLUMBUS.

“M. Alain Gerbault, the Columbu.s of the lawn tennis world, has just made a sensational voyage across the Atlantic in a thirty-foot yacht,” writes Mr Wallis Myers, in tire Telegraph. “One hundred days on the ocean, battling single-handed with storm, thirst, and fever, will not produce Davis Cup form, but the"-Frenchman, who brought his tennis trophies in his locker, is anxious to stretch big limbs. “The Firccrest, M. Gerbault s

• tiny craft, is an Eng’ish-built ship, and was designed by Mr Dixon Kemp, win* designed ,the King's yacht Britannia M. Gerbault planned his voyage after reading the log published in London of Jehu Kelley’s trip in the Diablerie last* summer, but -whereasi Kclky fount! fair winds all the way over, M. Gcrbault ran into head winds and hsavy gales. Twice ho encountered hurricanes. Kelley has met the French player here, and says it is easy to see from his energy and rapid movement, how lie was cock, sailer and navigator in one. But he also had to do a great amount of sewing and patching sails. Throughout the trip he banked heavily on his inherent : philosophy. In days of calm he read voraciously.” '‘The world is not so old that it will read without a thrill cf the Odyssey of M. Alain Gerbault,” says ■the Telegraph. “Hois not, indeed,

the first to sail an open boat across the Atlantic, but it ig net au exploit ~ which will ever be tediously repeated. ilis boat was a 30-foot 10-ton .cutter, which would have seemed a cockle shell to an Athenian trireme, and a small craft even to the bold Ulysses. The caravels of Columbus and Vasco da Gama were far larger. But the spirit which sent Mr Ger- ' baud sailing on hi& lonely voyage from Gibraltar into the West is, we suspect, not altogether different from that which was in those old seamen, Phoenicians, Vikings, Portuguese. Italians, who sailed away into the unknown. They would have said that tiny sought gold or glory or trade, but love of adventure and a fight against the power of the sea must have been patent in them too. "The l world, we' sometimes lament,

has no more mysteries left and nothing more for explorers to do. From Pole to Pole, from China, to Peru, all is known and mapped', and even photographed. But we need not fear that the human race will lose \ the eneryg and the daring of its past because there are no mere worlds to conquer. Our young men will still dream dieams, and still, like M, Gerbault, go out on wild ventures, lie laid a. course from Gibraltar, he tells us, along ‘the old sailing routes used by Columbus, arid afterwards by the pirates who: sailed the Spanish Main.' How many boys who read that wi’l want to go and do likewise?'’