LONE VOYAGE TO AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27669, 27 May 1955, Page 12

LONE VOYAGE TO AUSTRALIA

Tasman Grossing In Dinghy Planned

TRIP TO MELBOURNE OLYMPIC GAMES

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, May 26. Mr Philip Hoareau, a 33-year-old fisherman from the Seychelles Islands, is preparing to row across the Tasman to Australia in a light 16-foot dinghy. Tomorrow he will return from a holiday in Rotorua to his home in Napier to work out the final details.

Alone, without sail or auxiliary motor, he intends to pit his endurance against more than 1000 miles of sea from the mouth of Milford Sound to the coast of Australia. He will make the trip for two reasons: to attempt something which has always been thought impossible, and to reach Melbourne in time for the 1956 Olympic Games.

“I want to set a sporting record which will encourage others to attempt the same feat. After all, I have only myself and my boat to lose,” he said tonight. Mr Hoareau made a spectacular arrival in New Zealand in 1948, when he sailed into the Waitemata harbour in a 26-foot Seabird type yawl, the Springbok, with a well-known South African yachtsman. Mr A. T. Hanison, after a journey from San Francisco. Mr Hoareau plans to give himself two months’ concentrated training in small boats before he begins his voyage, more to accustom himself to the notching motion than for rowing practice.

During World War II Mr Hoareau was a sailor in the Carnarvon Castle, and after his trip to New Zealand he was engaged in the coastal trade for some years before returning to his original job as a fisherman. At present he is a member of the crew of a trawler based at Napier.

He estimates that his journey will take seven or eight weeks, with an average of about 24 miles a day. At night he will sleep in an insulated waterproof suit while, held bv a sea anchor on 20 fathoms of rope, the boat will drift on a westerly current. He intends to take easily-prepared food, with a high vitamin content, in waterproof lockers at the bow and stern of the dinghy. As a reserve, he will carry enough food to last 80 days at sea.