OVERDUE SCHOONER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18255, 25 November 1933, Page 16

OVERDUE SCHOONER

SAFETY OF THE ISABEL WIFE’S ANXIETY RELIEVED Bears lor the 160-ton auxiliary ketch Isabel, which left Panama on July 15 for Sydney, and wds nearly a month overdue, were allayed by the receipt of a cable message reporting that the vessel had arrived at tho island of Ua Pu. in the Marquesas, on November 2. The cable incssago was received by the Consul-General for France, M. Dussap, who communicated with the authorities in the Marquesas at the request of the Navigation Department. The action was taken following an appeal from Mrs. W. 11. Weeks, wife of the owner-inaster, who reached Sydney at the end of July with her two children, and expected her husband to arrive within two months. Mr. Weeks, a London dentist, purchased the 65-year-olrl Isabel and set out from Plymouth for a, cruise round the world. Mrs. Weeks, with her two young children, accompanied her husband. The ketch sailed to the Canary Islands, then proceeded to the Barbadoes. Trouble with the crew occurred on the next stage of the journey, to Colon, the entrance to the Panama Canal. When the younger child met with an accident,' Mrs. Weeks loft the ship and proceeded to Sydney by the Makura. Mr. Weeks was to sail to Sydney via Tahiti and Fiji, and expected to complete the voyage in two months.

It is thought that a series of calms, always possible in those waters, accounts for the fact that tho voyage from Panama to the Marquesas occupied 110 days. Ua Pu is approximately 3700 miles from Balboa, the port of Panama. The cable message stated that Air. Weeks called at the island for provisions and fresh water, and later left for Papeete, about 750 miles away. When the ketch roaches Papeete a little more than half the voyage to Sydney will have been accomplished.