Bonita is resting peacefully in her mudberth, but D and I went to Arnside at the weekend for the 4th Crossfields conference. These have been held alternate years and are an enjoyable occasion, though this year the journey there by rail was a bit disrupted due to signal failures, train delays, diversions, cancellations etc. However sailing in old boats equips you to cope with this sort of frustration and we got there eventually.
It was good to meet up with people and hear encouraging stories of boats being restored and bought back to life. Bonita is the oldest Crossfields built boat afloat, and I have talked about her at previous conferences. However this time I talked about Pacific Moon, a yacht built by Crossfields in 1913 and which sailed to the South Pacific in 1931-2. She is the subject of a book 'Thames to Tahiti'.
Now out of print, it is nicely written account of the adventure and deserves to be better known. I had done some research and found out a bit about her voyaging after Tahiti, but her final resting place remains unknown. The picture below from the book shows Pacific Moon at Tahiti with the owner, Sidney Howard in the hatchway.
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