VOYAGE OF DELIVERY

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30593, 9 November 1964, Page 3

VOYAGE OF DELIVERY

(N.Z. Press Association) GISBORNE. November 8. Four Gisborne yachties sailed the 40-foot American cutter Jinni out of Gisborne at 9 a.m. today for Auckland to deliver the vessel to the American owner and skipper, Mr Reems Mitchell, of Honolulu. The quartet is the brothers Graham Wallen, aged 34, a freezing works engineer, and John Wallen, aged 36, a furniture store employee and radio ham, Garry Barbour,

aged 19, an apprentice carpenter, and John Curruthers, aged 19, a Waterfront Industry Commission clerk. The brothers are experienced yachtsmen. The cutter has been in Gisborne since she was towed here on September 27 by the Gisborne trawler Sea Harvest, which picked up the disabled vessel in the lee of East Cape. The cutter had had a miraculous escape from a hurricane on the last leg of a trans-Pacific voyage from Tonga to Auckland. Mr Mitchell and his crew of two. Mr J. Harrold, of Honolulu, and Mr David Guttenpeil, of Tonga, ran into 70-knot winds and 25-foot-high waves 200 miles from Auckland.

The men were exhausted and starving, the motor, bilge pump and wireless were out of action and the back stay and stay sails were gone. But then the overcast sky lifted for a few minutes and they sighted the peak of Hikurangi. Mr Mitchell’s crew has since left the vessel, and Mr Mitchell, before leaving for Auckland, entrusted the cutter to Mr Graham Wallen, who overhauled the engine and had the sails repaired. His brother installed a twoway radio. The brothers are making a holiday trip for delivery of the vessel. They expect to reach Auckland within a week or 10 days. All four men will return to Gisborne after delivering the Jinni.