CHAPTER
- 38 -
A Whale's Tale and Others
Lodestar departed Wairoa December 9, 1962,
for the trip through the Roaring Forties. Al-
though the vessel was sailed south to the forty-
second parallel, the only heavy weather was an
hour-long squall, during which Lodestar main-
tained a speed of twenty-#ve knots, with that
day's run totaling 250 miles.(l)
IN THE 1950S AND 1960s, THE ANCIENT AND HONORABLE
profession of yacht designing and building began to feel the under-
mining of its traditional prerogatives and customs by modernized
versions of the Polynesian and Melanesian multi-hulled sailing craft.
All of the early circumnavigators had written with awe of these
speedy craft usually a pair of canoes lashed together and sailing
enthusiasts had begun to experiment with them long before World
War II.(2)
After the war, especially in Hawaii and Southern California, the
"cat craze" swept the young (and not so young) generation. In the
islands, brilliant natural designers such as Rudy Choy, Woody
Brown, Alfred Kumalae, and others, were developing large ocean-
going multi-hulled racers. In the 1955 TransPac (open only to mono-
hulls), the Choy-designed Waikiki Surf, entered unofficially, and in
one of the stormiest TransPacs on record, came in ahead of forty-nine
others in an elapsed time of ten days and fifteen hours, beaten only
by the famous Ticonderoga, Stormvogel, and Morning Star. At times,
Surf would be leading the pack at speeds up to twenty-five knots.
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Another catamaran, the Aikane, sailed unofficially in the 1957 and
1959 races and was first to finish both times, setting a still unbeaten
record of nine days, twenty-two hours, and thirty-three minutes for a
multi-hull.
Meanwhile, in Sausalito, California, across from San Francisco, a
former World War 1I pilot, print-shop operator, and small boat
sailor named Arthur Piver, who had been one of the first to build and
sail modern catamarans, began experimenting with a three-hulled
version which he dubbed the trimaran. Piver's tris, in a half-dozen
different sizes, began to appear in all parts of the world built mostly
in backyards from plans sold by Piver. Many advantages were
claimed for the ungainly-looking trimaran, and to prove them, Piver
himself sailed one of his Lodestar models across the Atlantic, and
another across the Pacific.(3)
As the trimaran craze surfed along at high speed, two of Piver's
Victress-class models Donald Crowhurst's Teignmouth Electron
and Nigel Tetley's Victress were entered in the Sunday Times
Golden Globe Race. Tetley became the first person to sail around the
world nonstop singlehanded in a trimaran, and probably the first to
circumnavigate in a multi-hull.(4)
This naturally inspired dozens of similar attempts, and not a few
disasters. Piver himself was lost without a trace off the California
coast while testing a new trimaran. At this writing, word has come of
two trimaran disasters to young amateur voyagers who left the
Columbia River port of Portland, Oregon, on world cruises, only to
soon become disasters. One of them capsized, and drifted for more
than two months almost across the Pacific Ocean before being
rescued by a passing ship. Of the three aboard, only one survived.
The more popular the multi-hulls become, the more numerous
they are even respectable yacht designers have turned their talents
in this direction and the more controversial they become. While
the arguments rage pro and con over their seaworthiness, speed, and
sometimes outrageous claims of superiority, literally hundreds are
being built and dozens are venturing out onto the Seven Seas on
long, often astonishing voyages.
One of the lesser-known circumnavigations was the voyage around
the world of Cetacean, a 37-foot Piver-designed trimaran, built at
Port Hueneme on the southern California coast by Clark Barthol, his
partner, Dennis Fontany, and Clark's wife, Meta.
Leaving in March 1967, the three of them sailed down the Baja
coast to Acapulco, and then crossed to the Marquesas in June. From
~ 326 ~
there, they went to Penrhyn in the Cook Islands, a then-popular stop
for voyagers, and on to Samoa to wait out the hurricane season.
In Samoa, they met John Sowden and his sloop, Tarmin. Sowden
was only there four days, but the Cetacean crew remained ten
months. They would meet again many times along the way around.
In Suvan, they spent two months on a major refit. Sowden was
there also, as was Leon Teliga with Opty. From Fiji, they cruised part-
way with Tarmin to Port-Vila, New Hebrides, Port Moresby, New
Guinea, Dili, and Timor.
In company with Tarmin, the next major lay-over was in Bali, an
East Indian paradise in which postponement of departure time
comes easy. They stayed here from November 1968 to June 1969. In
Samoa, the Cetacean crew had been increased by Patricia Ahlson, an
American schoolteacher. Miss Ahlson left the ship at Bali to return to
her home in Chicago. For five months, Tarmin and Cetacean were
the only yachts in the tiny picturesque Balinese harbor of Benoa.
In June, they sailed for Christmas Island, and then on to Keeling-
Cocos. Next came the Seychelles, seldom visited by yachts, where
they arrived on July 31 at Port Victoria. From here, they went on to
Mozambique, arriving September 1, and then sailed down the chan-
nel to Lourenco Marques. On October 2, they put in at Durban,
where they were welcomed by Dr. Hamish Campbell, the unofficial
greeter of world voyagers and the local yachtsmen.
They sailed for Cape Town on December 20 and encountered two
stiff gales en route, taking one week for the passage. At the end of
January, they sailed nonstop for St. Helena, took on water and stores,
and then embarked on the longest passage of the trip 4,900 miles to
Colon, Panama, arriving March 31, 1970.
Here, Meta, who was pregnant, flew home and Miss Ahlson flew
down from Chicago to join the trimaran for the last leg through the
canal and uphill to Los Angeles.
They did not go directly north from Balboa, but as usual with most
voyagers, sailed out to the Galapagos Islands, taking fifteen days from
Las Perlas Islands. They spent ten days at Barrington and Santa
Cruz, then with one hundred gallons of water and food for six weeks,
set off toward home.
The passage uphill was made with less than twenty-four hours of
calms, making good an average of one hundred miles a day, taking
forty-three days, most of the time sailing to weather. This passage
over this route certainly is one of the fastest on record. Most vessels,
large or small, are not as fortunate in capturing the right wind.
~ 327 ~
Cetacean arrived at Oxnard, sixty miles north of Los Angeles,
without any untoward incident, thus completing a successful cir-
cumnavigation. The Barthols and Dennis Fontany then swallowed
the anchor, sold the trimaran, and adjusted to a more domestic life
inland. They had got the bug out of their systems.
THE PRAIRIE SAILOR
LIKE RAY KAUFFMAN AND GERRY MEFFERD, WHO ACQUIRED
their love of the sea and yen for bluewater voyaging in Des Moines,
Iowa (to say nothing of Harry Pidgeon long before), Quentin Cultra
grew up on a farm in the Corn Belt, ninety miles from the nearest
water deep enough to float the kind of ship he dreamed about.
A farm boy in the rich, black dirt country of southern Illinois, he
had never seen an ocean or been near any water that even looked like
it, except Lake Michigan, when he taught school briefly in Chicago.
In the mid-1960s, when Piver-fever was spreading rapidly, he was
fascinated by the 35-foot trimaran designed by Arthur Piver for
home-building. It was of simple construction with a plywood skin
covered with fiberglass cloth, and with spars of laminated fir. Out on
the farm, he had plenty of room for construction (a trimaran needs a
lot of room, not only for construction but for docking). But as the
work progressed, he found he needed help for moving or rolling over
hulls, so he would go into the village, and pass the word around the
local taverns that there was free beer at the Cultra farm. Soon he
would have twenty or thirty helpers, often including the bartenders
of said taverns.
Putting together the framework and applying the plywood skin was
fairly easy. Cultra, like most farmers, was handy with tools. Applying
the fiberglass, however, presented new problems. The work required a
constant temperature of 70° or better, and since this phase of the job
came during the winter months, he had to surround the hulls with a
tent-like cover, heated with electric elements, and breath the semi-
toxic fumes while he worked.
Finally, the hulls were finished and bolted together. The next step
was getting the 2O-foot-wide craft into some water, which meant
moving it over Illinois highways. At the state capital, officials laughed
at his requests for a permit. Then he called a house-mover, who
hung up on him. A helicopter company offered to do the job, but did
not have a machine big enough to airlift 4,500 pounds of boat.
In the end, Cultra, being a young man of direct action, simply
~ 328 ~
loaded the trimaran on a trailer, covered it with a sheet of black
plastic, and started down the country roads at dawn one morning,
over a route he had previously scouted and measured. On several
occasions, the local constables stopped him.
"What have we got here, son?"
"Oh, why it's an experimental asparagus picker."
In rural areas, people can understand an experimental asparagus
picker whereas they might be highly suspicious of a 35-foot tri-
maran.
The Queequeg for that was her name, after the character in
Moby Dick reached water on New Year's Eve in 1967, when she
was christened by Cultra's girl friend, Judy, with a bottle of frozen
champagne, and launched into the Illinois River. The temperature
dropped to minus 18° that night and Queequeg was frozen solid in
the ice. Later, Cultra chopped her loose with an ax and lifted her out
with a crane to await spring.
In March, with a crew that included Jack Downs, a Chicago social
worker (who had never seen an ocean, either), Cultra started off
down the Illinois, entered the Mississippi, and motored southward
toward the Gulf of Mexico propelled by a 25-horsepower outboard
motor. During the winter, Cultra had taken a course in celestial
navigation at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, but had yet to set
his first sail.
Into the gulf and around to Port Isabel, Texas, went the Quee-
queg. There, with the help of members of the "Confederate Navy,"
the sailors from the Corn Belt learned how to handle the boat under
sail at sea.
By October 1968, they were ready to challenge that sea, and the
first leg was a nice sail to the beautiful tropical island of Cozumel off
the Yucatan Peninsula except for the first crisis, which turned out
to be an encounter with the edges of Hurricane Gladys, in which
they learned seamanship almost overnight. Passing through the Yuca-
tan Channel, they visited Costa Rica, Panama, transited the Canal,
then headed for the enchanted islands of Galapagos.
From here, they took the traditional yacht route to the Marquesas,
3,100 miles in 26 days, mostly using the self-steering mechanism with
the rudder working off the jib. It was hands-off almost all the way.
The two lads were disappointed with Tahiti, which by now had
become a crowded tourist trap, and nothing like the island paradise
reported by Robinson, Gerbault, Nordhoff and Hall, and Kauffman
and Mefferd.
~ 329 ~
But they had to stay four months to wait out the hurricane season.
Here they were joined by Don Travers, a navy lieutenant looking for
a ride home and willing to go the long way around. They sailed to
Western Samoa, then to Tonga and the New Hebrides. After some
adventuring with headhunters in the Malekula country, they sailed to
Australia, then up Queensland inside the Great Barrier Reef, through
Torres Strait to Indonesia. They stopped frequently at such places as
Bali, Komodo, where the twelve-foot dragons lived (described by
Robinson and Long).
From Bali, they shaped course to Mauritius, then sailed on to
Madagascar. After three days on which sightings could not be taken,
currents swept them off-course and piled the Queequeg up on a reef.
Downs was swept overboard. When Cultra tried to launch the
dinghy to save him, he lost the dinghy and found himself in the
water fighting for his life. Only Travers remained on board. Cultra
finally caught a life ring thrown to him, and made the beach where
he found Jack waiting. They could hear Travers calling to them over
the roar of the surf, but it was now impossible to swim back, so they
buried themselves in the sand to keep warm until daylight came.
At first light, they saw Queequeg still there. Travers had trailed
some lines ashore attached to plastic jugs, but they could not reach
them. Downs volunteered to go for help and departed down the
beach. Had he waited a few more minutes, it would have been
unnecessary, as some friendly natives came along and helped Cultra
get hold of one of the lines and get aboard. He and Travers then got
the sails up and on the tide, Floated off the reef.
They sailed alongshore trying to spot Downs, but did not see him.
For thirty-six hours, they sailed on and off the beach, waiting for
Downs to reappear. During this period, while in their bunks, Travers
and Cultra were suddenly thrown violently about. They rushed
outside in time to see a huge ship looming overhead. One of the
outboard hulls was crushed and both masts torn off. The main mast
weighed four hundred pounds, and could not be handled alone. The
ship had passed on without stopping. They quickly sent up a flare
and flashed an S.O.S. with a flashlight. The ship then slowed down,
made a long circle and came back, the maneuver taking about two
hours. The captain apologized and offered to tow them to Mauritius.
From the ship, a radiogram was sent to the American consul in
Madagascar explaining what happened and asking for help in locating
Downs.
As it happened, Downs was already in jail he had been taken into
~ 330 ~
custody as a spy. Finally released, he flew to Mauritius. A month was
spent repairing Queequeg.
Leaving this hospitable island, they sailed to Durban, and thence
around Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town, encountering some
monstrous storms, the most violent of the entire trip. Next came St.
Helena and Ascension, then the bulge of Brazil. Their route took
them up to Grenada, the Virgin Islands, and to Bermuda. From here
they sailed direct to New York, then into the Hudson Waterway and
up to the Great Lakes, and finally home to Chicago to complete the
circumnavigation.
The adventure took the farm boys two and a half years and covered
about forty thousand miles. Aside from the Madagascar episode, it
was a remarkably easy voyage, free of serious accident. At home, the
Corn Belt sailor married his lady, and settled down to raise a family.
DOCTOR OF THE WINDS
IN THE SUMMER OF 1963, AN ODD-LOOKING YACHT ROUNDED
the Lizard and stood up Plymouth Sound with passing vessels and
villagers on shore doing double takes. Not only was the yacht unusual,
for it was a twin-hulled catamaran, but along the guard rails and
flying in the rigging were dozens of diapers drying in the wind.
British yachtsmen, accustomed to seeing vessels dressed for enter-
ing harbor with strings of signal flags, may have dropped monocles at
the sight, but not for long. The skipper was a well-known London
physician, Dr. David Lewis, and a yachtsman who had made a
number of unusual voyages in small craft, including one singlehanded
race to America. With him this time were his wife, Fiona, and their
two daughters, Susan, one and a half, and Vicky, three months. They
had just come from the Orkneys, through the North Channel and
across the Irish Sea, with no problems even in the boisterous weather
encountered except that they ran out of baby food, and also out of
Nappies, which meant the emergency of washing and drying non-
throwables for recycling.
This voyage had been a short leg, part of a trip to Iceland that Dr.
Lewis had made to test the new catamaran, with three experienced
crewmen. In the Orkneys, on the return, the family had come aboard
for the home stretch to test their reactions. It was in fact, Dr.
Lewis's intention to sail around the world in Rehu Moana, and this
had all been a dress rehearsal.(5)
In any case, the family was already committed. He had given up
~ 331 ~
his medical practice in London. They had sold their home. All their
money was tied up in the new yacht. A New Zealander of Welsh
extraction, David Lewis had been a general practitioner in East Ham,
London, for seventeen years in the post-World War II period. By a
previous marriage, he had a fifteen-year-old son, Barry, and a twenty-
year-old married daughter, Anna. His present wife, Fiona, was in her
late twenties, some eighteen years the doctor's junior. She was a
South African, tall and feminine, but also athletic and keen on the
outdoors and mountain climbing, as was Dr. Lewis. She was skilled in
many things, such as cooking, making clothes, party-giving, and
graphic arts. She had taught dancing and physical education. She was,
unfortunately, also susceptible to seasickness.
Dr. Lewis had entered the 1960 Transatlantic Singlehanded Race
in his first yacht, Cardinal Vertue, a J. Laurent Giles sloop, 25 feet 3
inches length over all.(6) His book about this voyage (My Ship Would
Not Sail Due West) and his sailing background became a popular
best-seller in the United Kingdom, and helped convince the doctor
that he could quit his practice and voyage the oceans and still make a
living.
In the winter of 1962-1963, he commissioned Colin Mudie, the
inventive and imaginative English yacht designer, to come up with a
catamaran based on the Polynesian double-canoes. Dr. Lewis was a
student of the South Pacific and her peoples, and secretly longed to
return to New Zealand. Built of plywood, Rehu Moana had many
experimental features, including flaring bows, a wishbone rig, covered
steering position, and two heavily-weighted centerboards. The shake-
down voyage to Iceland was made with three mountain-climbing and
yachting friends. Severe gales that were encountered, a couple of dis-
mastings, and a few other incidents that generally can be expected
with a new boat, convinced Lewis that the design and construction
were sound.(7)
Entered in the 1964 Transatlantic Race, Lewis was again up
against some formidable competition: Francis Chichester, Blondie
Hasler, the two Frenchmen, Tabarly and Lacombe. Because the rules
specified only one person aboard, Fiona and the children had to take
passage on a freighter to America. The race was a terrible ordeal for
all boats, but in spite of this, Dr. Lewis made it in thirty-eight days
and twelve hours from Plymouth to Newport, most of the time in
emergency conditions. He came in seventh after Chichester, Tabarly,
Val Howells, Alec Rose, Hasler, and Tahiti Bill Howell. Both of the
~ 332 ~
multi-hulls in the race Folatre and Rehu Moana were damaged in
the crossing.
In America waited Fiona and the two restless girls, staying with
John Pfleiger, the genial commodore of the Slocum Society, who
himself later went missing at sea. The family had crossed on the
M/V Sunset from Hamburg, landing at Richmond, Virginia, where
they rented a car and drove over the unfamiliar keep-to-the-right
freeways through New York to Newport.
The race over, now the serious voyaging was to begin with the
family aboard. This meant re-outfitting for the second Atlantic cross-
ing to Cape Verdes and then down to Rio. The twin hulls became
jammed with toys, bikini pants and brassieres, suitcases, dresses on
hangers, children's books, feminine toiletry, all of which over-
whelmed the basic bachelor disorder of the first crossing.
Before leaving, Dr. Lewis was given the title of Honorary Citizen
of Newport, and had gone to one of his race competitors, Tahiti Bill
Howell, who was a dentist, to have an abscessed tooth removed.
What with all the partying at the end of the race, the irrepressible
Howell managed to remove the wrong tooth by the hurricane lamp in
the salon aboard Stardrift. By the time they had discovered the error,
a local disturbance had brought the local gendarmes and Howell
disappeared. Lewis had to find another dentist to extract the ab-
scessed tooth.
The children developed a passion for ice cream in America, and a
reluctance to leave. Fiona, too, had become reluctant without know-
ing why. Once at sea, her problem was magnified by seasickness,
claustrophobia, and the constant motion. Dr. Lewis, who kept an
almost clinical daily log of the voyage, noted that her condition
became progressively worse until it threatened to abort the voyage.
Once Fiona recognized it as anxiety and fear, she was able to control
the condition. The children at first had suffered pitifully from the
close quarters, the constant stench of vomit, the constant motion,
and the anxieties of the parents. But gradually, as the gales subsided
and shipboard life became more routine, they all got over it.
After a stay in the Cape Verdes, they departed on the third
Atlantic crossing to Brazil. Several weeks were spent in Rio, outfitting
and repairing, and making modifications for the coming trip around
Cape Horn. This leg of the circumnavigation was one of the most
interesting ever recorded, in my opinion.
The Lewises on Rehu Moana thrashed down into Cape Horn
~ 333 ~
latitudes and spent several months exploring the wild and remote
channels of Patagonia, seldom seen by yachtsmen, and even then
only passing through.(8) It was a paradise for Dr. Lewis, the amateur
naturalist, and a busy time for Dr. Lewis, the physician, for he was
much in demand among local residents to treat their ailments. The
days were filled with navigation and ship handling, dispensing medi-
cine, studying flora and fauna, taking care of the children, making
notes on anthropology. For weeks, they cruised among the channels,
often in the vicinity of the Horn, recording everything, including the
antics and cute sayings of the two girls. At Punta Arenas, at 3:30 on
the morning of Christmas Eve, they heard on the radio that Bill
Nance, one of the most brilliant and daring of all singlehanders, who
had purchased the old Cardinal Vertue, had just rounded Cape Horn,
some two hundred miles to the south, on his solo circumnavigation.
Leaving the Patagonia channels, they cruised up the remote water-
ways of the Chilean coast, stopping frequently at settlements and
Indian camps. Dr. Lewis was especially interested in the remnants of
the Alacalufe or Canoe Indians, a native people who had been
decimated by disease and civilization in one of the most remote parts
of the world. His studies indicated to him that because they were a
hunting society, they had survived and adapted and had every chance
of rebuilding, given time and modern medical help.
The stay in Valparaiso was a delightful one, filled with hospitality.
The girls, who had been thriving on shipboard life, had grown aston-
ishingly, and their antics, wherever they went, were a constant source
of amusement, trial and tribulation, keeping Dr. and Mrs. Lewis
constantly on their toes. Here they cabled to England for a friend,
Priscilla Cairm, an experienced sailor and navigator, to join them.
She would be a helpful crewmate, but also could relieve Lewis of
navigational chores so that he could make a study of the Polynesian
methods as explained by Harold Gatty in The Raft Book, during the
Pacific crossing.
The route took them in a rough passage to Easter Island (Rapa
Nui), visiting Juan Femrnandez on the way. Rehu Mona was appar-
ently the first multi-hull to visit this remote island since prehistoric
days, and the natives regarded them as reincarnates of the old
legends." The children were especially popular. The family next sailed
to Mangareva via Pitcairn, then to Papeete, Rarotonga, and down to
New Zealand.
In his native country, Dr. Lewis and the family were idolized. He
~ 334 ~
was named the New Zealand yachtsman of the year for 1965. He
made a television film, edited from his footage taken on the voyage so
far, wrote another book, and with the help of the local multi-hull
clubs, put the catamaran in condition for the second half of the
circumnavigation.
From New Zealand, they sailed to Tonga, Fiji, the New Hebrides,
and Port Moresby; then through Torres Strait to Thursday Island
and Darwin. Breaking loose from the hospitality of Darwin, they
sailed across the Indian Ocean via the Keeling-Cocos to Durban.
This was Fiona's native land, and the hospitality was again over-
whelming.
Rounding the Cape of Good Hope, they stopped at Walvis Bay in
South West Africa where a tug broke loose in a blow and crashed
against Rehu Moana, nearly ending the voyage there. Repairs were
made with the help of local residents, and the girls got their first close-
up experience with ostriches, jackals, gemsbok, and baboons. The
next stop was Lobito in Angola. Then came the Congo River and the
frontier town of Banana, visited last by the Crowes on Lang Syne.
At the end of March, they set off on the final leg, arriving at
Plymouth, after three years of excitement and adventure during
which the children had grown into young ladies and had associated
with peoples of all races, nationalities, and social status. The deck of
the Rehu Moana had been their playground; climbing the rigging
was their exercise. They had attended kindergarten in New Zealand
and again in Walvis Bay, and spoke or understood several languages.
Lewis was awarded an honorary degree from Leeds University, and a
research fellowship by the Australian National University to study
surviving fragments of Polynesian navigation.
Rehu Moana was sold, and a heavy 39-foot, gaff-rigged ketch,
Isbiorn, purchased. The family left Plymouth on March 7, 1968,
made Antigua in twenty-three days, cruised among the West Indies,
on the way to the South Pacific. Aboard now was Lewis's son, Barry,
who obtained his master's ticket and later took over the Isbiorn for
trading and chartering after a spell in the merchant marine.
Dr. Lewis' research in Micronesia and Polynesia completed, he went
back to Canberra to a desk and a library to complete the writing. The
girls started regular school, and the family settled down to life ashore.
Dr. Lewis, however, could never fully accept this. On October 19,
1972, at one P.M., aboard the 32-foot, steel-hulled sloop Ice Bird, built
especially for Antarctic waters, he departed Sydney Heads on an
attempted solo circumnavigation of the Antarctic Continent. Wav-
~ 335 ~
ing good-bye from the pilot vessel were his two daughters, eleven-year-
old Susie and ten-year-old Vicky.
His route took him down to the Screaming Sixties and around the
icebergs to Palmer Station, during which he capsized twice and
suffered some incredible physical and mental ordeals. At Palmer,
lying against the rock pier when he arrived, was Jacques Costeau's
Calypso. His vessel badly damaged, there was doubt he could con-
tinue his planned circumnavigation of the Antarctic. His would not
have been the first anyway, as Dr. Grifffith and family had already
achieved this on Awahnee. Besides, he was not sure that it could be
achieved by a singlehanded yacht. But he had accomplished one
thing he had been the first singlehander to touch the Antarctic
continent. It was something of a first, and no one could take that
away from him.(10)
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- end Chapter 38 -
=========================================================================
AUTHOR's NOTES
Chapter Thirty-eight
1. Trans-Pacific Trimaran by Arthur Piver (Mill Valley: Pi-Craft, 1963.)
2. In the mid-1930s, Eric de Bisschop sailed his Kaimiloa from Hawaii
to France by way of the Cape, and, in 1967, Dr. David Lewis and his family
completed a circumnavigation in Rehu Moana.
3. Comparing Piver's time with those of early conventional voyagers
however, is revealing: Slocum's passage to the Azores and Gibraltar, for example
was much faster than Piver's in spite of the speed claimed for the trimaran.
4. In The Spray, Vol. XV, 1971, Michael Kane claims his Carousin
II was the first trimaran to sail around the world. He and an Australian designer
Jock Crother were at the time building a 57-foot trimaran for an attempt at a
nonstop circumnavigation averaging 200 miles a day. By early 1974, it had not yet
started.
5. Rehu Moana means "ocean spray." Design by Colin Mudie, she
was built by Prout Brothers at Canvey Island, Essex, in 1963. The length overall
was 40 feet; Iwl, 35 feet; beam, 17 feet; draft, 3 feet and 5 feet with center-
board down; displacement, 8 tons; sail area 700 square feet, power, British
Seagull 4-horsepower outboard. The skin was 3/8-inch plywood on laminated
frames and knees A half ton of lead was used for ballast. Behind watertight
bulkheads were foam flotation compartments designed to float the vessel even
if both hulls were stove in.
6. Cardinal Vertue was purchased by Bill Nance, the Australian, who
circumnavigated singlehanded east-about via the three capes, from September
1963 to August 1968, ending in Florida.
7. One of the crew on the shakedown cruise was Axel Pedersen, who
later circumnavigated in Marco Polo.
8. Others in the same general area at the time included Bill Nance on
Cardinal Vertue, the Griffiths on Awahnee, and no doubt others.
9. Hoto Matur'a was reputed to be the first of the ancient voyagers
to visit Easter Island and to people it. Since the Lewises arrived on a twin-hulled
vessel, they were regarded by some superstitious natives as the second coming
of Hoto Matur'a.
10. For a clinical report of life aboard a catamaran, while circumnavigating
with a wife and two small daughters, see Daughters of the Wind by
David Lewis. His attempt at circumnavigating the Antarctic was carried by
National Geographic magazine, December 1973.