A LONE VOYAGER

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLXII, Issue 15239, 4 January 1943, Page 4

A LONE VOYAGER

ARRIVAL FROM BUENOS AIRES WELLINGTON, December 29. Senor Vito Dumas, tLe Argentinian rancher, racehorse owner, adventurer, and writer, had an interesting story to tell of his lone voyage in his 31£ft. ketch, Leigh 11, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Wellington, via Capetown. When he arrived in Wellington on Sunday his ketch was 180 days out from Montevideo? his last port of call in the South American Continent, and 104 days out from Capetown. Senor Dumas is 41 years of ago. A wealthy ranch owner, he breeds, owns and races some good horses at meetings around Buenos Aires. A member of the yacht club of the Argentine, his lonely ocean voyages are made as a hobby. He says he is just one of those men who like solitude and adventure, and that is the way in which he finds them.

Despite % the time occupied by his main hobby, however, 'Senor Dumas has found time to" become an accomplished polo player, boxer and swimmer. In 1923 he swam 55 kilometres in the River Plate in 25 hours in an endurance test. He says he is a descendant of the famous French novelist Alexandre Dumas but the destruction of records during the French Revolution prevents him from establishing the exact relationship. His family left France in 1790 and reached the Argentine in 1864. Senor Dumas is a qualified* air pilot and holds an international civil pilot’s license. His journey from Montevideo to Wellington has been packed with danger. Some 200 miles out in the South Atlantic he awoke one' night to find a storm had arisen and his little vessel rapidly filling up with water. She had a hole in her the size of a fist, having been hit at the waterline by drifting wreckage. It was only with great difficulty, and after a long struggle, that he succeeded in blocking the hole, jand emptying the ketch of the water sjie had taken in.

In the struggle, Senor Dumas cut his hand, and the cut later turned septic. His arm and shoulder swelled up and h© became feverish. For 10 days he lay helpless in his bunk and the ketch drifted at the mercy of the winds. Another experience he met in the South Atlantic, was an attack by a giant killer whale and had some anxious moments before the big mammal gave up the attack and disappeared. Between Capetown and Wellington, Senor Dumas met extremely bad weather. Seas ran mountainously and three big waterspouts passed closely to his little craft. He was all out physically when he reached Wellington on Sunday,and he says he will need all the 20 days he intends to stay here to recover from the strain h© has undergone. In one of the storms encountered down in the 1 ‘Roaring Forties,” between Capetown and Wellington, his biggest breaker of water, holding 200 litres (about 53 gallons). was wrecked. His other breaker containing 145 litres, ran dry, and the last fivo days before reaching Wellington he was without water for cooking or drinking. Th© course followed by Senor Dumas after leaving Capetown took him close to Tasmania, and he sighted New Zealand at the south of the South Island. Beating his way up th© coast of the. South Island to Cook 'Strait, he was hampered by a blanketing fog, but he found Cape Farewell only a few hundred yards out of his reckoning. For navigation he used a sextant and has had no difficulty whatever in this respect on any of his voyages. The Leigh 11 is a strong little ship of nine tons, constructed of viraro, a very durable South American timber. Her beam is lift 10in, her draught a little more than five feet, and her freeboard about 14 inches. The entrance to her decked cabin is by way of a batch, the cockpit being separated from the cabin by a stout bulkhead. The lone voyager intends to return via Chile and Cape Horn. So far the voyage has covered 11, miles ; 4500 miles from South America to South Africa and miles from South Africa to New Zealand.