messing about in boats

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30892, 27 October 1965, Page 15

messing about in boats

Vice-Regal Trophy The Bernard Fergusson Trophy for New Zealand's yachtsman of the year has been awarded to Dr. David Lewis and will be presented by the Governor-Gen-eral at Auckland in March. Dr. Lewis is a 48-year-old physician who gave up his Harley street medical practice for sea adventure, writing and research. He is now navigating his 40ft catamaran Rehu Moana (Maori for “ocean spray”) across the Pacific, navigating by Polynesian methods. to make his first visit to the Dominion since 1938. Dr. Lewis came out from Plymouth at the age of two and went to Wanganui Collegiate and the Otago Medical School. As a schoolboy he made a lone 400-mile canoe cruise in the North Island and when a medical student he was a notable alpinist.

Sanders Cup No trials for the X Class were programmed by the Canterbury Yachting Association this year. The

Canterbury club has usually been responsible for arranging the trials, but as the X Class owners had formed themselves into an association this season properly left the newly-fledg-ed group to manage its own affairs. The result was that the trials were not programmed. The X Class owners will now make their own arrangements to pick a representative to meet challenges, leaving the series as late as possible. A. F. Burgess successfully defended the Sanders Cup for Canterbury on Lyttelton last summer: this season the contest will be at Bluff, from February 17 to 23. Half-Mast “Hey! You’ve left your binoculars behind!” someone called as Mr S. A. Graham went down the stairs of the Waimakariri Sailing Club pavilion on Saturday afternoon. “It’s all right,” Mr Graham called back, “I’ll pick them up tomorrow.” But Mr Graham, one of the club’s small team of unobtrusively effi-

cient starting officials, had gone down the stairs for the last time. Less than two hours before Sunday’s race began, at Kairaki Beach, he died at the age of 46. and the Waimakariri burgee hung in the windless afternoon at half mast.

New Cats The former Finn skipper, D. Turner, of Mount Pleasant. was crewing in B. Moore’s R Class dinghy at the Waimakariri opening

day: but this will not be a regular combination. Turner is lauching a new Croppdesigned 18ft catamaran, similar to the replacement being built by W. A. Cordell, commodore of the Canterbury Catamaran Squadron. Skippers who will have new Shearwaters include D. Evans of Mount Pleasant, R. Frost of Pleasant Point, G. Bryant and P. Priest of the Canterbury club. Frost's former boat Neptune was the fastest catamaran in Canterbury for several seasons.