Man And Four Women To Sail For Honolulu

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30143, 29 May 1963, Page 16

Man And Four Women To Sail For Honolulu

(New Zealand Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, May 28. If the wind is right tomorrow, Mr J. Samson, a Canadian who came to New Zealand on a working holiday in 1958, will cast off the 10-ton ketch, Nina, from King’s wharf and with a crew of four young women, including his wife, leave for Rarotonga. On a course which will take them via Rarotonga, Papeete, Morea and the Marquesas, they expect to terminate their voyag* at Honolulu in about five months.

A colourful figure, aged 26. Mr Samson is a man of many parts. He admits that before coming to New Zealand he “just hobped around." He was in turn a workei in the Arctic, at radar stations, a labourer in the oil fields of Canada, a worker in rubber plantations in .New Guinea, and since ccming to New Zealand has been both a shipwright and a mechanic in Whangarei. In 1960 he went to New Guinea and while there met his wife. She is also a Canadian.

“I took her on a crocodile hunt and two weeks later we were married," he said. Other women members of his crew are two Aucklanders, Miss L. Heilyer, an 18-year-old denttist's receptionist, and Miss J. McNichol. aged 21. a short-hand-typist. Both will be making their firs* overseas trip. The other member of the crew is Miss J. Cameron, aged 22, of Sydney, who has been working in New Zealand as a member of shearing teams.