Fairmile Launch Meets Hurricane

Northern Advocate, 28 December 1949, Page 3

Fairmile Launch Meets Hurricane

AUCKLAND, Wed. (Sp.).—Leaving the Cook Islands to avoid the hurricane season and to be surveyed in Auckland, the Cook Islands Producers’ Cooperative Society’s converted Fairmile launch La Reta encountered the full force of a tropical hurricane in which she was hove-to for nine hours. Commanded by Captain D. R. McLeod, formerly a Marine Department surveyor at Auckland, and with a crew of island boys, the La Reta left Rarotonga on December 15 intending to spend the hurricane season in Auckland undergoing a refit. At midnight on December 18 she met a hurricane which teached 70 miles an hour, and was hova-to until the worst of the storm passed. Captain' McLeod said the 312 ft launch behaved remarkably well. PRAYERS OF THANKS When the vessel berthed at the Western Viaduct the crew mustered forward as is their custom on entering port, for prayers. A prayer of thanks for the safe arrival, of the vessel was led by the chairman of the cooperative society owning the ship (Mr A. R. Henry) in Rarotongan, and the crew sang the 23rd Psalm in native harmony. With the exception of the captain and the wireless operator who is a Gilbertese all the crew members are llarotongans. The La Reta was built in Auckland as an anti-submarine vessel and sold by the War Assets Disposal Board to the society which intends to use her in an effort td re-establish Cook Island commerce.