ROUGH PASSAGE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20366, 25 July 1934, Page 5

ROUGH PASSAGE.

Small Craft’s Battle With Severe Gale. REDCLIFFS TO WELLINGTON. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, July 24. 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 Mr E. S. Gerard, the New Zealand Oxford blue and member of the crew of the ketch Waterlily, which, manned by six Christ's College old boys, was wrecked during a cruise of the Pacific last year. After the Waterlilv cruise, Gerard purchased an 18ft 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 west at dusk on Saturday, and he put out again to run into hail, rain and wind that drove the Matangi hissing through the water so fast that she was in dangei 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 the course of an account of his adventure to-night. After a two days’ battle with the gale, the tiny vessel made the heads I this afternoon, and finally reached a snug anchorage in the boat harbour.