Woman takes helm in man’s world

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32461, 23 November 1970, Page 6

Woman takes helm in man’s world

"The Pro*" Special Service AUCKLAND, November’ 22. I was beginning* to wonder if Mrs Marina Geary, one of two women in New Zealand to hold a skipper’s ticket for a coastal fishing vessel, was mythical by the time I finally ran her to ground almost on her front doorstep at Whangaroa, writes Rosemary Leonard in the “New Zealand Herald.”

Only the fact that I had actually spoken to her once on the telephone encouraged me to keep trying. After all, it had taken five months of telephoning and calling at Whangaroa to coincide with her, and it felt like Stanley meeting Livingstone when the diminutive figure of Marina Geary materialised beside the car at the end of an overnight vigil at Whangaroa and asked: “Are you the reporter who’s been looking for me?" Whangaroa residents had only recently varied the usual reply of: “She’s just gone, to Auckland ... to Whangarei ... to sea for a week ... to Australia,” with "she’s about the size of twopence,” but it was still a surprise to see how petite, young, and feminine Mrs Geary was. She said later that she was 36 and that, yes, she did get tired at sea sometimes but so did all the crew. The crayfishing pots on the Margaret M, the 38ft boat she skippers for a Paihia man, were all lifted in by winch and apart from that there was little heavy lifting. - Mrs Geary said her career on fishing boats started almost by accident. “I started going out on trips just for fun in Auck-

land. To see what it was like and gradually slipped into doing it as a job. It just grew,” she said. The master’s ticket was another thing that “just happened.” Friends told her she should give it a go and she eventually did, gaining her ticket after a six-week training course at the Marine Nautical School in Auckland this year. Asked how a male crew felt about working a boat skippered by a women, Mrs Geary laughed and said “Well—no-one has ever said anything to me. I have always been well-treated.” She is responsible for equipping and provisioning the boat which accounts for the hectic pace she sets on dry land. The day we met at Whangaroa about 9 a.m. she had just returned with one of the crew from picking fresh fruit at Kerikeri for the forthcoming trip for the Margaret M. They fish up around Cape Reinga and the Three Kings Islands, usually setting off at night from Whangaroa and staying away about a week. Mrs Geary described the Cape Reinga waters as treacherous and not a very nice sight in bad weather. “Do you ever get scared?” I asked. “Yes, I do," was the reply. “There’s always some hitch somewhere, like lines going wrong.”

But that the anxious moments are far outweighed by the good ones at sea, was clear as Mrs Geary and two of the crew of the Margaret M. described the strange and wonderful and odd sights they come across at sea . . . creatures like sunfish, sharks, turtles and killer whales, a wide variety of sea birds, and all sorts of flotsam and jetsam, including most recently a football semi-encrusted with barnacles, floating regally 10 miles off Cape Reinga towards the Three Kings. They described the Three Kings Islands as a fabulous place, particularly in winter when the seals are there, with wonderful shadows in the early morning and in the evening which create an effect of Gothic castles and Cathedrals.