Exotic sails
With his ketch Te Rapunga, eccentric German-born George Dibbern had fitted right into New Zealand’s exciting Depression-era shoestring Pacific cruising adventures spearheaded by Johnny Wray with Ngataki and Dick Wellington with Seaward, but with his own raffish twist.
George was born in Kiel in northern Germany in 1889, in comfortable circumstances, the only son of a sea captain. In 1907 he was accepted as an apprentice aboard the three-masted barque Pamelia, owned by the Flying P Line of Hamburg which ran many famous windjammers, including the near sister-ships Pamir, Passat, Pommern and Preussen. Pamelia was in the trade of bringing nitrate for fertiliser (and explosives) back from Chile around the Horn. After two trips around the Horn and back, George signed on the barque Antuco bound for Taltal, Chile, via Sydney, for nitrates. He jumped ship in Sydney.
Over the next five years George had a wide variety of jobs and
