End of a dream

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32540, 25 February 1971, Page 7

End of a dream

(N.Z. Press Association!

AUCKLAND, Feb. 22. For the sole female crewmember, Miss Vicki Watts, the abandoning of the Endeavour II at Parengarenga Harbour, on Monday meant the end of a dream.

Speaking from her bed in Kaitaia Hospital tonight, i English-born Miss Watts, who is 28, said she had had a love for sailing all her life. “I joined the Endeavour in Brisbane,” she said. “This was like a dream come true.”

“I have been sailing all my life but never anything like this before.

"I’m terribly sad about the Endeavour, I still can’t believe it... she was so beautiful.” Miss Watts, an attractive bronzed brunette from Devon, said she lost consciousness on several occasions during the desperate moments of getting ashore on the rubber life raft.

“I can’t remember very much about that,” she said. “I think I was blacking out through exhaustion because we had had so little sleep.” But at no stage, she emphasised, did the crew ever feel “this was the end.” “I was convinced we would get ashore,” she said. “We were ready to leave the Endeavour at a moment’s notice. We stayed with her as long as we could.” , Dressed in out-sized men’s pyjamas, Miss Watts said that if the Endeavour II was unsalvagable she would like to see New Zealand before joining a boat going to Britain.