(From News letter October 1994)
I must tell you a bit about another Vertue voyage recently carried out. Like most Vertue epics, it was done modestly without the spur of publicity and the contents I am about to relate could almost fill a bock. Don’t worry, however, as I intend to describe the voyages of Kainui (Sail No.Vl06) in brief detail.

Kainui, commissioned in 1960, was sold by her first owners, Brian and Liz Lowe in 1976, when they retired to Australia. Her second owner, Peter Kinsey, sailed her to American Samoa, Fiji (where he threw her inboard engine overboard) and Tonga. In the Vava’u group in northern Tonga, he met and married a Tongan woman and settled on Pangai motu. Kainui was one of only two boats which survived Cyclone Isaac, which blasted through Tonga several years later. She survived because Peter was the only sailor wise enough to put in a serious mooring before the hurricane season started.

In 1984 Peter, with wife and new son sailed back to Canada with dreams of a bigger boat. Six weeks after arriving in Victoria, Kainui and Russell Heath, an American, became partners. He slung an outboard on her transom and motored 1000 miles back up to Juneau, Alaska.

Russell Heath had had only two weekends of sailing and no experience of navigation before he set out on his remarkable voyage, one of the bravest of the decade. He and Kainui headed south and east, stopping at Quyaquil, Ecuador, then west to the Galapagos, Pitcairn and up through tropical isles to Fiji, crossing some of Kainui’s previous tracks. Kainui and her intrepid skipper then sailed south to New Zealand where Russell enjoyed his other hobby, skiing. November 1987 saw Kainui crossing the Tasman Sea where she was knocked down in a storm 100 miles off the coast of Australia, shifting her doghouse and cracking her deck and injuring her skipper when he hit the overhead. Russell arrived in Melbourne exhausted but refusing to give up his intended circumnavigation and bear in mind that Kainui has only an outboard engine and no electrics or aids to navigation apart from a sextant and tables.

In Melbourne, Russell met the man who had Kainui built, Brian Lowe. Brian had thought she had been sunk because all correspondence with her successive owners had ceased. Brian and Liz Lowe sailed Kainui the following winter in the Coral Sea.
After a refit, Kainui and Russell then sailed across the Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka, Maldives, up to Yemen, Djibouti, Sudan and to the Suez. Kainui was the first to pass through the canal powered only by an outboard after, with difficulty, obtaining permission from the officials. The engine packed up 10 miles out of Port Said but Russell battled on. He then had a difficult passage across the Mediterranean, followed by a 51 day passage from Madeira to Bar Harbour, Maine, arriving on 3rd July 1989 four years after leaving Juneau in Alaska. Kainui had logged 37,000 miles, but missed lapping longitudes by less than 400 miles. All this single-handed.
Russell wrenched himself from the boat in 1992 and Kainui passed on to Steve Garrand, a professional wooden boat builder working in Camden, Maine. Steve plans to re—rig her as Andrillot was originally with gaff topsail and bowsprit and sail her again across the oceans.
Reading Russell’s letter, I could not believe the modesty of the man. He describes his adventures as “just another trip” and, as far as I know, not even a magazine article has been published about him and Kainui. he writes affectionately “Kainui was the first thing in my mind though clearly a spirit moves her that found its way into my heart”. He goes on and writes “with tears in my eyes she has passed from my life though she still visits me in my dreams”.