HIGH ADVENTURE NEAR HOME

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23121, 20 August 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

HIGH ADVENTURE NEAR HOME

Two Men in a Boat

By G.R.C.

A DVENTURE, says Mr. Lennox AA Kerr, needs no seeking in -L distant corners of the earth: it is wherever the true adventurer finds it—and no other but the true adventurer shall find it., Mr. Iverr should know. Years ago he sailed to the United States as a seaman on a liner, deserted the liner in New York, worked as a lift operator, became a truck labourer for a change, hitch-hiked across New York State in the winter, worked in a speakeasy, ran whisky across the Great Lakes and spent some time as as-, sistant "chucker-out" in a cheap drinking den patronised by gunmen. Then for a time he "hcld-down" the trains across the continent, became a hobo and rose to be a windowwasher, and finally joined a Hudson Bay Company vessel trading into the Western Arctic where he worked 20 hours a day for two months, and returned to London from Vancouver as a sailor in a grain carrier. Alter all this, Mr. Kerr found adventure anions the junk-yards along the Clvdesiilc, trying to build lor a total outlay of £35 a niotor-cnusmg yacht fi*>m the hull of a discarded ship s lifeboat. The figure of £35 he might, not exceed, for he had cajoled £25 oi it from his publisher as an advance on a book lie undertook to write about Ins task and the subsequent adventures it might brins him in cruising arouiKltho coasts of Scotland; and the other -LIU, it is to be presumed, represented ins personal resources. Expert Advice Needed

Lifeboat conversions are not looked upon with favour by the average yachtsman and there are lew of them V* Auckland in spite of the fact that it is one of the world's greatest yachting centres. This is partly due to prejudice and partly because many conversions, carried out by amateurs of necesssity as cheaply as possible, have proved unsatisfactory in service. Cheapness is ot itself 110 objection, but too olten expcit advice is given the economy axe along with other essentials. , ... Mr. Kerr made 110 such mistakes with his conversion. His lifeboat hull cost him £!) in a shipbreaker's yard, his pitch-pine decking four and sixpence (it was once part of the iloor ot a Glasgow picture hall) his motor-car engine, bought from a wrecking fit in, £2" 10s; historv. as he says, went into his boat, for the smooth upper sides were once a lustv timber shore that held upright many a vessel being repaired in a Greenock graving dock: there was a small length of oak fioiu Pa isle v Abbey, a bulkhead of threeinch panelling from a public-house, and a sainson-post that once supported the washing on a tenement "green. Nautical Man Friday This was true economy, for the wood was sound; but experience of boats and skill of" eye and hand were needed to make tlio host uso of it, and here 31 r. Kerr was fortunate, for one afternoon as lie stood pondering oyer his hull, a voice spoke suddcnl*' behind him: aou should take that sheer out of her. it said, and turning, he beheld Chippy, who seems, for all bis many shortcomings, to have been the nautical Man Friday whose knowledge and skill were largely responsible for the success ot the*venture. , . , There is fascination in Mr. Kerr s description of the building of the Migrant, delight in his sketches ol Clvdeside scenes and characters, ami satisfying reading in bis accounts or vovagings among the sea loebs and islands of the Scottish coast. The book is charmingly illustrated with water-colour and black-and-white sketches by the author's father-in-law, Mr. S. J. Lamorna Birch, H.A., the famous landscape painter, who accompanied Mr. Kerr on several of his cruises. "Cruising in Scotland," by Lennox Kerr (Collins).