Couple with baby to sail round Horn

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33032, 27 September 1972, Page 6

Couple with baby to sail round Horn

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SYDNEY, September 26,

A British family of three who left Ireland to sail round the world in a small catamaran have arrived at Sydney with an extra “crew member”—-a 13-month-old son.

Mrs Rosie Swale, who is 25, gave birth to the baby aboard their 30ft craft at Italy, during its 20,000-mile voyage to Australia. She and her husband, Mr Swale, aged 33, with their three-year-old daughter, Eve, and the baby, James, now plan to sail back to Britain via Cape Horn.

CALL AT N.Z. The boat is undergoing a refit at Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay for the next five weeks before they start the second leg of their journey, stopping at New Zealand en route.

Mrs Swale said: “As far as we know James will be the youngest child to sail round the Horn aboard a yacht.” The boat, the first the couple have ever owned, arrived at Sydney at the week-end with a nappy fluttering over the stem. It has

taken Mr and Mrs Swale to Italy, Gibraltar, across the Atlantic to the West Indies and to the Pacific Ocean via the Panama Canal.

“We were learning as we went — we worked out the navigation together on the voyage,” Mr Swale said yesterday.

“In fact, we were rather proud that we sailed from Tonga across the Tasman Sea without once sighting a ship, and managed to sail straight into Sydney Harbour,” he said. STORM IN TASMAN Their worst moments were in the Tasman when a storm had their craft Anneliese "standing on her ear.” “But she’s built like a gull and never gets her stern feather wet, so we hope we’ll be all right in the cold southern seas,” Mr Swale said.