Snowlines: Spirit of youth still contagious

By COLIN MOORE

The youth sat in the back of my car with a faraway, slightly glazed look as we left the wharf where the Spirit of New Zealand had just berthed.

It was a look that you might have after winning a sports championship or achieving a long-sought personal goal, a look of elation tinged with disbelief.

"That was the most awesome 10 days of my life," the Taranaki teenager, Chris Thomas, said quietly.

In the front of the car, a shipmate was red-eyed from farewells with the friends she had made on the sail-training vessel.

My daughter had volunteered me to give some out-of-town fellow trainees a lift to the bus depot to catch their buses home. When I got back to her she was sparkling, bubbling, trying to explain an experience, a series of hundreds of memorable little events that were so special she began to worry that her words were inadequate.

"You can never understand unless you have been on the Spirit of New Zealand," she says. "And even then you wouldn't understand unless you were on our voyage."

She is right, of course. You don't spend 10 days in close proximity with new friends, discovering a range of experiences, without forging a bond and a feeling that is yours alone.

On the night before the voyage ended she had stood on a top yard as the ship sailed under the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It may have been done thousands of times before, but no one else can share her particular memory and elation at that experience on voyage 353.

Yet such memories, while personal, are not exclusive. So, when we got home I dug out one of my old scrapbooks and a clipping from the Sunday Herald published in February 1974 and watched as my daughter read, smiling and nodding.

The story began: "Tom Muriwai, a 16-year-old Mangere schoolboy, sat perched on the bowsprit of the Spirit of Adventure, his eyes staring intently into the waters of the Hauraki Gulf, his face masked with pleasure.

"One hundred feet behind him Michael Horton, aged 17, from Rotorua, gripped the wheel of the 104-foot topsail schooner, his eyes flicking between the sails and the compass, as the country's new sail-training vessel close-hauled to Rakino Island.

"Neither had been to sea under sail before but, like the 28 other youths on board, both had been caught up in the spirit of adventure.

"It was the first real sail of the schooner's second 10-day training voyage and the experience was leaving the boys subdued.

"'Great', 'terrific' or just a big grin were the only ways they could express their feelings.

"David Stirling, aged 15, from Christchurch - 'I reckon it's good' - sat on the deck in the sunshine, his eyes glistening with excitement as they moved from the sails to the gulf waters.

"He had never been in a boat before and, as the generator motor stopped and the ship cut silently through the water, the smile never left his face."

My daughter confirms that nearly 30 years after I wrote about the second voyage of the Spirit of Adventure, the experience of sailing on the country's sail-training ship is as wonderfully numbing as ever - including the compulsory early-morning dive overboard.

Some things have changed. The larger Spirit of New Zealand has replaced the original training vessel, Spirit of Adventure - the first voyages were single-sex, now they are mixed. And if you get a letter from your doctor that you are an addicted smoker, you may sometimes be allowed on deck for a fag. But the essential concept of the late Auckland industrialist Sir Lou Fisher, who had the first Spirit built at a cost of about $290,000, remains the same.

Sir Lou was on the wharf when I joined that second voyage and I quoted him: "'I don't want you writing anything bad about the voyage,' Mr Fisher had warned me severely before sailing. But he need not have worried. The spirit of adventure is contagious."

And so, my daughter assures me, it was on voyage 353. Sir Lou has left an enduring legacy for the nation's future that has sadly been unmatched by few other wealthy New Zealanders in recent decades.

* The 45.2m Spirit of New Zealand was launched in 1986 by Dame Naomi James and is managed by the Spirit of Adventure Trust.

* Trainees, who must be 15 to 18 years of age, are normally nominated through their schools. The trust pays a $750 subsidy towards the cost of a berth on a 10-day voyage; trainees must find the remaining $900.

Many schools and service clubs give further subsidies, and before their voyage the trainees are encouraged, and given advice, on personal fund-raising.

* To make donations or contact the Spirit of Adventure Trust, ph (09) 373 2060, e-mail: info@spiritofadventure.org.nz

* colinmoore@xtra.co.nz