The Sospan Fach saga 1974

The Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982) of luck and bad management - and some desperate praying ONE OF THE STRANGEST tales of the sea is the story of the two girls, boy, and man, with all too little sailing experience, who set out to cross the Tasman Sea to Sydney in a yacht and were marooned for six weeks on Middleton Reef, 300 miles from Australia and 800 miles off course. JEAN DEBELLE talked o them after their rescue. "MANO here, he's the one who saved us," said Peter Lindenmay er, cheerfully hugging the stocky Tongan fisherman. Mano just grinned. It was Mano Totau who first saw the signal from the wreck of the Japanese fishing-boat that led to the rescue of the crew of the Sospan Fach. When the survivors landed at Ballina, northern New South Wales, there was an emotional reunion with family and friends - who had giv en them up for dead. As a backdrop to the intense excitement, Tongan crewmen strummed island music on guitars. Peter Lindenmayer. (18). of Melbourne, had. with Christine Braham. (25) of Adelaide and Geraldine York. (19). of Auckland, answered an advertisement pinned to the wall of a New Zealand youth hostel. The advertisement sought three girls to crew a ferro-cement sloop, the Sospan Fach, from Auckland to Sydney, with its owner-builder Irfon Nicholas. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/46242362