A LONE CRUISE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19860, 25 July 1934, Page 2

A LONE CRUISE

BATTLE WITH ELEMENTS. United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright WELLINGTON, July 24. j After an adventurous trip, battling ; all the way with rough weather, a | small ■ boat of unusual rig, manned by one man, arrived at Wellington from the south this afternoon. The ship's cook, crew and captain was E. S. Gerard, of Christchurch, an Oxford Blue and a member of the crew of the ketch Water Lily which, manned by six Christ’s College Old Boys, was wrecked during a cruise in the Pacific last year. After the Water Lily cruise, Gerard purchased an 18 foot ship’s lifeboat, a baker’s van was converted into a rough cabin and the forward part of the vessel was decked over. In this boat, christened Matangi, Gerard left Redcliffs on Wednesday. On Friday an easterly wind made him run into Port Levy. The wind changed to the west at dusk on Saturday, and he put out again to run into a storm of hail, rain and wind that drove the Matangi hissing through the water so fast that she was in danger of broaching to. “I was wet through. There was a foot of water seething from end to end of the cabin and the land and sea seemed to have gone mad,” he said in an account of his adventure to-night. After a two days battle with the gale, the tiny vessel made the heads this afternoon and finally a snug anchorage in the boat harbour.