Waitangi Sails 300 Miles With Improvised Tiller

Northern Advocate, 16 April 1949, Page 5

Waitangi Sails 300 Miles With Improvised Tiller

SYDNEY, Sat. (11.30 a.m.). —The ketch Waitangi covered the last 300 miles of her voyage from Auckland to Sydney under reduced .sail and with an improvised tiller. Her original tiller snapped last Saturday at the height of a gale. At the same time the gale damaged the mainsail and tore 15 feet of tracking from the foot of the main mast.

On April 3 the yacht was hove-to in heavy seas, with waves up to 50ft high. The crew made fast for the night and went to bed. Next morning, in a stiff gale, they found that the tiller had snapped and that the mainsail and mainmast had been damaged. The owner-skipper, Mr E. B Chapman, and the crew replaced the tiller with a windlass handle, using an old fishing-rod as a cross-piece. The replacement lasted only about a day before breaking down. Mr Chapman then used a harpoon shank for the second replacement, which held for the remaining 300 miles. Mr Chapman said they sailed through some filthy weather, but the Waitangi never shipped a sea. Mr Chapman was accompanied by his wife, six-year-old son, and Messrs Peter Oldham, Jim Ewers and David

Stewart. None of the party had made the crossing before. The co-navigators, Messrs Chapman and Oldham, were proud of their dead reckoning, which brought them straight to Sydney. Early in the voyage bilge-water put the engine out of action for the remainder of the trip.