ADVENTUROUS TRIP

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20891, 24 August 1939, Page 7

ADVENTUROUS TRIP

11,000 MILES IN 14 H.P. BOAT FAMILY FOR DOMINION SIX MONTH’S VOYAGE (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, August 1 Mr and Mrs George Pope, who lived in Adelaide Square, Bedford, told me today that they have sold up their home to buy a 14 ii.p. boat in which they and their three children —Rosemary, aged four, Michael, aged two, and Mavis, aged nine months — are going to sail 11,000 miles to New Zealand. The voyage will take six months, reports the Chichester correspondent of the Daily Express. They outlined their plans to me in the cabin of their converted lifeboat, in Chichester Harbour. The boat is thirty-five feet Jong and nine feet wide. Mr Pope, aged thirty-three, said: "None of the children has been in a boat before, but they will be all right. I heave been a sailor. “We are going to New Zealand because 1 can get more money there. I have been getting 56s a week at Cardington R.A.F. Station, where I was a storeman, but I can make 3s an hour in New Zealand as an electrical wirernan. “The Name is a Good Omen” “The High Commissioner has written that there is work for me there. “This boat has cost us £75. I think its name—Wishbone —is a good omen. The boat has a double skin of teak, and is as solid as Gibraltar. “I shall cruise from port to port, and the longest stretch will probably be to the Marquesas, in the Pacilic, after leaving the Panama Canal—about 3000 miles. "We arc laying in tinned food, including 200 tins of evaporated milk for the children.” Mrs Pope, who is twenty-three, said: "When George told ine of his idea, I said ‘All right.’ It did not surprise me much. Except for the movement, it won't be very different for the children from being at home.”