village
village
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life
Our Sailing Days
at Muri
Story & Artist Joan Gragg
I would say our Dad was an adventurer and he
wanted us to be adventurers too.
Our family always had a boat. Once we went
on a trip from Avarua harbour to Ngatangia
harbour. We anchored in the lea of Motu
Namu. At night we slept on the boat and
during the day we swam and explored the
motu. It was the best holiday we had.
It was a very long way to Muri where we sailed
and kept our canoe. We rode our bikes from
Tutakimoa to Muri, sometimes our friends the
Lows gave us a ride in their homemade truck
called Sally. When Sally started up all the dogs
in the neighbourhood barked. For some reason
the sound of her engine drove them crazy.
By the time she arrived at the intersection of
Tutakimoa Road and Moss Road to pick us up
you couldn’t hear yourself think, every dog in
Tutakimoa was out jostling for position, trying
to bite her front wheels, taking up the entire
road barking and snarling.
Before we were recruited to sail on our own we
swam in the lagoon, from the time we arrived
at Muri until we were chased out of the water
at sunset. Occasionally we crewed in a race with
Dad or Uncle Carry Marsters, but once we
were a team of proper sailors we had no choice,
we sailed every Saturday and sometimes on a
Wednesday afternoon.
At the start of our sailing careers there were only
girls in our family. Our oldest sister, Marie was
10 years old and our youngest, Bets was 2. The
rest were, Joan 9, Mariana 8 and Linda 5. Our
brothers were waiting in the wings to be born.
As sailors the first thing we did when we arrived
at Muri was prepare for the race. Our heavy
12 • Escape Magazine
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