Voyages in Troubled Waters Make Life Interesting for Crew of Ketch Ranui

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26779, 24 May 1948, Page 4

Voyages in Troubled Waters Make Life Interesting for Crew of Ketch Ranui

Life aboard the 57-ton auxiliary ketch Ranui, which is now at Dunedin, is arduous, seldom uninteresting and sometimes exciting. That is the opinion of the Ranui’s engineer, Mr T. L. Macquarie, who was interviewed aboard the little ship on Saturday morning. Mr Macquarie’, who was doing his washing, was having some trouble with a pair of pillow-cases which after an earlier wash had been dyed a pink colour when a red-covered boQk was accidentally placed on them. That happened down near Campbell Island last week where he was not able to dry them because of the state of the weather.

On the return voyage from the southern island, to which she had been making one of her periodic visits, the Ranui ran into some very heavy seas. Tossed about like a cork in a northerly gale, the ship had approached to within 40 miles of Dunedin, but as progress had fallen practically to the zero limit and fuel and provisions were becoming low. Captain N. Worth decided to run before the storm and put in at Bluff. The ketch spent a night there and then sailed for Dunedin again, arriving at this port on Friday morning, none the worse for her experience. She will leave for Wellington to-day. Since the Public Works Department acquired her in 1940, the Ranui has been regularly employed in the carriage of stores, first to the coast-watch ing stations on the Auckland and Campbell Islands, and latterly to the meteorological station on Campbell Island. During the past year she has also been visiting Raoul Island, in the Kermadec group, 600 miles north-east of New Zealand, engaged in the same work. Mr Macquarie has been a member of the crew for two years, and in that period he has had plenty of opportunities for exercising his talent as an amateur photographer on those two islands, one sub-tropical, the other sub-Antarctic, and bbth offering a diversity of subjects for his ever-ready camera. Mr Macquarie said that the ship usually made four trips each year to Campbell Island with mails and stores, and once every 12 months she carried a relief party for the meteorological station.

step on to what seemed a solid surface. sink up to the hips and fall forward in a black ooze—" Not an enviable experience,” he said. The Ranui often struck stormy weather when making the passage between the island and the mainland, and he found that the weather reports could not always be relied upon. As a little ship could not heave to for any length of time, the crew was sometimes not very comfortable when the Ranui was riding a storm, but, he added, she was a very fine sea boat, nevertheless. Last year the small vessel sailed 15,200 miles. “ The skipper is a great navigator, and does not use the radar equipment much. He knows his way about the southern islands even in the fogs, and it is frequently very foggy down there,”

said Mr Macquarie. The sails, which were hoisted whenever there was a favourable wind, had a steadying effect on the ship. He had enjoyed his visits of Raoul, the biggest island of the Ker.nadec group, although the landing of the stores was an even more hazardous operation than at Campbell Island. Raoul was noted for its rugged coastline, and the surf made the building' of a wharf impossible. “The only way to land on it,” he continued, “ other than risk the surf, is by dinghy and a hand winch. The boat is taken in close to the shore, where a basket worked by the winch carries passengers'and cargo back and forth. As the current constantly swirls the boat in towards the rocks, the task is far from easy.”

Transferring the stores from ship to shore was a tricky job at the island. A dinghy was used for the purpose, and sudden squalls were apt to make the operation extremely hazardous. Mishaps, however, occurred only infrequently. Campbell Island, which lies about 400 miles south of New Zealand, was described by Mr Macquarie as being roughly circular, with a coastline of 30 miles. As one walked along the peaty foreshore, one was likely to step into the recent wallow of a sea elephant, or elephant seal. The wallows, he explained, became covered by a little carpeting plant and the unwary, out for a promenade, would