The 75.46-foot ketch Coongoola was making good time under full sail on a sunny day in early 1949 when one of the people on board decided to climb over the rail, jump into the Indian Ocean and start swimming strongly in the direction of Antarctica.
It would have been bad enough losing a sun-crazed crew member in such circumstances, but this was worse: the swimmer, now in the rolling swell halfway between Australia and South Africa, was the wife of the yacht's owner.
Coongoola quickly hove-to, by which time the lady had turned back in the direction of the ship where, after clambering back aboard, she happily announced that she'd finally achieved a dream: To swim across the equator.
This is just one of many colorful incidents in the near 60-year history of the Coongoola, which was launched in Brisbane in 1948 specifically for one of Australia's more unusual inaugural voyages.
And 57 years later, the Coongoola is still sailing—now doing day trips in Vanuatu for holidaymakers from around the world.
Coongoola was the love of a Toowoomba businessman, G.H. Griffiths, who owned the Southern Cross foundry, famous for its diesel engines and windmill-driven water pumps. Mr. Griffiths reckoned that South Africa would make a good market for the products of his bustling little post-war factory but, since he wanted to take samples of his engines and windmills with him, he knew he couldn't fly with them and he couldn't really take them on a passenger ship.
So, he got a company in Brisbane to design and build a suitable yacht that he called Coongoola – an Aboriginal word meaning wide open spaces—and installed his own engines to provide electric power and a bit more speed in light winds.
Mr. Griffiths set sail on September 24 1948, although it's said the family had little experience in off-shore sailing. He took with him his wife, their two teenage children, a professional skipper, a deckhand and a cadet engineer who was also the ship's cook.
The year-long, 18,641-mile return trip took Coongoola through the Coral Sea to Darwin, Timor, Bali, Jakarta, Singapore, Penang, Colombo, the Maldives, Seychelles, Mombasa, Zanzibar and Durban.
However, it was anything but plain sailing for the stout-hearted Coongoola and her crew. The ketch almost rolled over in a cyclone in the Mozambique Channel on the way to Durban, and was tossed from one wave to another in a second cyclone on the way back to Fremantle.
G.H., as he was generally known, sold Coongoola in the late 1950s and in the 1960s she became famous as a radio relay ship for several Sydney/Hobart yacht races. After that she went off to the (then) British Solomon Islands as the official Commissioner's yacht before being given to the United Nations for agricultural research work.
It was after this latter stint that Vanuatu's Owen Drew found her in a sale yard in dilapidated condition in 1978 and took her back to Vanuatu for refurbishing and day cruising.
Today holidaymakers are collected from their Port Vila hotels and taken the hour's drive to Coongoola's anchorage in Havannah Harbor – where the Americans massed their fleet for the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Coongoola visits a small turtle breeding sanctuary on off-shore Moso Island, and then sails off to pretty Sun and Moon Bay for snorkeling, fish feeding and a barbecue on Hapi Tok Beach. The beach's name is pidgin for Happy Talk Beach, named after the song in the musical inspired by James A. Michener's book South Pacific, which he wrote after serving in Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) with the American Navy during the Pacific War.
The full day's outing including a return hotel pick-up, the cruise, entry to the turtle hatchery, snorkeling, morning and afternoon tea on board, and a beach barbecue costs approximately $73. Soft drinks and beer can be purchased on the yacht and on the beach.
Book Coongoola and her cheerful ni-Vanuatan crew with your travel agent when you book your Vanuatu holiday.
Expand your global community vocabulary
ni-Vanuatu: the indigenous Melanesian citizens who make up the vast majority of Vanuatu's population
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