NO WORD FROM WATERLILY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 153, 14 June 1932, Page 5

NO WORD FROM WATERLILY

KETCH’S VOYAGE '.Lt VAVAU. LAST REPORT THREE WEEKS AGO Auckland, June 13. No wireless reports from the ketch Waterlily have been received in Auckland for three weeks. The ketch is bound from Auckland to Vavau, aud left Russell on May 14 with a crew of old boys of Christ’s College. A wellknown amateur wireless operator has a schedule arranged between his own station, the Waterlily (2WL), and an operator at Suva. . The last wireless report from the ketch was received on May 21, when she gave her position as approximately half-way from Auckland to Vavau. For some days before her signals had been weakening, and it is believed that the vessel’s transmitter is not functioning well or is out of range. The radio equipment is an 80-metre short-wave transmitter, obtaining its power from dry batteries, which were expected to last about three months.

If the Waterlily had maintained the same speed over the last stages of the voyage as at first, the ketch should have reached Vavau last week, but it is impossible to calculate the exact time she should take to cover the distance owing to the vagaries of wind and tides.