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Tag Archives: Ta’Aroa

Cya classic yacht regatta 2019 – race #1 – 37 photos.

Rawhiti & Ariki

CYA Classic Yacht Regatta 2019 – Race #1 – 37 Photos

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DEAD IN THE WATER

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ON A TRANQUIL SUMMER EVENING IN 1972, a fisherman from the tiny port town of Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica, observed an unusual sight. As he pulled in his net in the fading light he saw what looked like three figures in a small boat sail up the Platanares River into a remote, jungle peninsula. Two of the figures were not moving.

A few days later a small boy, the son of a local farmer, discovered two shallow graves along the river bank. In the graves were the bodies of a man and a woman, a young couple murdered in a plot never fully explained but probably conceived in one man’s obsession and greed.

If death was in the wind for the victims as they set out on their voyage from Fort Lauderdale in the summer of ’72, they could never have sensed it.

Jack Sederlund was 41 years old, strong, dependable, a former Los Angeles stockbroker. His companion was Yvonne Hackett, 27, an athletic and resourceful Australian who Sederlund had met two years earlier.

Their yacht was the Ta Aroa, a 50-foot twin-masted ketch, broad-beamed, sturdy and rigged for ocean sailing.

Sederlund had built her in Newport Beach, Calif., in his own image – strong and capable. For five years, from 1966 to 1971, he had sailed her around the world, both singlehandedly and with Hackett after they met in the Caribbean in 1971.

Later that year, Sederlund decided to sail the Ta Aroa back to California via the Panama Canal. Shortly before Christmas, however, the yacht limped into Fort Lauderdale with a broken-down diesel engine. And when the keel broke during a tow up the New River the couple knew they were in for an extended stay. While Sederlund supervised repairs at the Summerfield Boat Works, Hackett busied herself with part-time brokerage work.

“She was a gentle, sweet person with a good sense of humor,” said an acquaintance of the couple. She had a gray and white cat named Spook, he recalled, and she liked to entertain and cook for friends at the boatyard.

Sederlund, by contrast, was reserved and forceful in a quiet way, his own man. If he had one flaw in his nature, friends said, it was an adventurous streak that sometimes superceded his normally cautious approach to life.

It was a streak that would prove fatal when, in July 1972, Sederlund and Yvonne Hackett sailed out of Fort Lauderdale in the repaired Ta Aroa and headed for the Panama Canal.

THE ALLEGED MURDERER, STILL AT LARGE, is Wolfgang von Morgenland. A German-born, naturalized citizen of Brazil, Von Morgenland was 32 when he arrived in Costa Rica in 1962. His motivation for the move was unclear, but his life in Costa Rica suggested grandiose plans with few results, dreams without substance and little inclination toward work. A failed marriage had produced a son, but in the 10 years he had spent in the peaceful Central American country he had established nothing much beyond a reputation for bravado and a knack for bending the truth.

By day, Von Morgenland could usually be found fishing from his tiny boat at the entrance to Golfito on Costa Rica’s west coast. And it was probably from this vantage point that he first saw the Ta Aroa as she motored gracefully into the harbor on Sept. 6, 1972.

Spotting the Ta Aroa must have been love at first sight for Von Morgenland. The coveted trophy was at last before him, and it seems likely that a cold and calculated plot to win her slowly began to unfold in his mind.

Von Morgenland had married again, a Costa Rican woman named Rita, and while he totally dominated her, he could be charming and polite in company when it suited his purpose.

For nearly three weeks after first meeting Sederlund and Hackett, it is believed that Von Morgenland entertained the couple with tales of artifacts and treasure uncovered on the Osa Peninsula across from Golfito. Not only did he know it well, he had a stash of relics and shells to prove it.

His attractive but passive wife may have helped him make Sederlund and Hackett feel at home when they visited the couple’s modest shack. It was a scenario authorities believe was repeated many times as Von Morgenland sized up his potential prey. And it was only through irony and timing that at least one other boating couple may have slipped from his grasp.

In a bizarre, small-world set of circumstances, Mike and Shelley Grysco met not only Von Morgenland but Jack Sederlund and Yvonne Hackett, all within the space of three months. The Gryscos were sailing their 36-foot yawl, Cellar Door, southbound from San Diego when they entered the harbor at Golfito in early July of 1972. There at the mouth of the harbor they spotted a tall, trim, European-looking man and his red-haired female companion fishing from a small boat.

“We asked the man to point out the way through the channel into Golfito,” Shelley Grysco remembered later. “He said, ‘Follow me, I’ll lead you in.”‘

No sooner had the Cellar Door’s anchor touched bottom than Wolfgang von Morgenland swung aboard. He was gracious and polite as he surreptiously examined every inch of the yawl. His friendliness and helpful nature seemed boundless.

It wasn’t long before Von Morgenland began talking of artifacts and shells. He showed the Gryscos large boxes with hundreds of shells he had collected from the Osa Peninsula. He proposed they all make a trip over in search for more.

Weeks had gone by and the Gryscos, while not entirely comfortable with Von Morgenland’s assertive ways, were not suspicious. The shelling trip seemed like a good idea. But then trouble broke out, a labor dispute involving U.S. banana interests in Costa Rica. The Gryscos became worried about the safety of their American-flagged boat, and a few days later they weighed anchor and headed toward the Panama Canal.

About this same time, the finishing touches were being put on the Ta Aroa at the boatyard in Fort Lauderdale. In mid-July, with Sederlund at the helm and Hackett in the galley, she sailed south.

On or around July 22, the Ta Aroa pulled into Key West and docked at the end of the U.S. Naval base. A few slips away was the Cellar Door.

Jack Sederlund and Mike Grysco hit it off from the start. Both were Southern Californians with their own sailboats. Grysco was bound for Fort Lauderdale, where Sederlund had been, and Sederlund was bound for places Grysco had recently stayed, including Costa Rica. But the name of Wolfgang von Morgenland never came up.

After a stay of several days, Sederlund and Hackett said goodbye to their new friends and headed out of Key West en route to Panama. Records indicate they traversed the Canal on Aug. 31, and on Sept. 6 sailed into Golfito – right into the waiting arms of Wolfgang von Morgenland.

FROM THE BEGINNING, THE GERMAN-BORN expatriate and the California stockbroker would have found much to dislike about each other. Both were forceful, egocentric and cocky, yet oceans apart in the real world.

Sederlund commanded the Ta Aroa, had been a successful businessman and had recently completed an ambitious five-year sailing odyssey. Von Morgenland was nearly destitute, a self-proclaimed loser desperate for a new identity.

Like the con artist he was, Von Morgenland carefully assessed Sederlund, looking for a weakness. He found it when he began telling Sederlund about the shells and artifacts he had collected in the Osa Peninsula.

“If there were two things you could get Jack going on,” a Fort Lauderdale friend remembered, “it was boats and artifacts.”

On the Osa Peninsula, pre-Columbian Indian treasure is said to exist in quantity – if you know where to look. And a seasoned diver and treasure hunter like Von Morgenland knew exactly where to look. Had he not already found boxes of beautiful shells and artifacts? A trip to search for more had sounded good to Mike and Shelley Grysco, and now it sounded equally interesting to the skipper of the Ta Aroa.

But unknown to Jack Sederlund, a plot was hatching. On Sept. 17, Von Morgenland obtained false documents that he filled in himself for a yacht called the Esperanza, Spanish for “hope.”He listed “Bill Hamilton” as captain and “Peter Smith” as mate.

ON SEPT. 26, WHEN THE TA AROA LEFT Golfito and headed across the bay toward the Osa Peninsula, there were three people on board: Jack Sederlund, Yvonne Hackett and Wolfgang von Morgenland.

While no one may ever know what actually happened, police investigators reconstructed events this way:

As the Ta Aroa drifted or lay at anchor just south of Puerto Jimenez at the mouth of the Platanares River, Sederlund was shot four times at close range in the chest and Hackett twice with a small-caliber pistol. It was dusk along the quiet coastline, with no one to hear the six shots ring out across the water.

Later that evening, a fisherman saw the dinghy from the Ta Aroa sail up the river with three passengers, one handling the outboard motor, the others seemingly asleep.

The next day Von Morgenland returned to Golfito with the Ta Aroa – alone. He booked passage on a small plane to the Costa Rican capital of San Jose and went to the house of his ex-wife. There, he persuaded her to allow their 8-year-old son, Wilhelm, to accompany him for a “day’s outing.”He then telephoned his current wife’s sister, Carmen, and invited her on a “coastal cruise.”With Carmen and Wilhelm in tow, Von Morgenland flew back to Golfito and began making preparations, loading supplies aboard the Ta Aroa.

On Sept. 29, three days after the killings, the Ta Aroa set sail again. This time there were four passengers on board: Von Morgenland, his wife Rita, his son Wilhelm and Carmen.

JUST ABOUT THE TIME THAT THE TA AROA got underway, the Costa Rican authorities were unearthing the bodies of Jack Sederlund and Yvonne Hackett, thanks to a farmer’s young son. They had been buried on either side of the Platanares River in the soft earth. Warrants were issued for Von Morgenland’s arrest on charges of kidnapping and murder. But by now, the Ta Aroa had disappeared.

For a full month, nobody knew where Von Morgenland had gone. And then, out of the blue, Carmen arrived back in Costa Rica, recounting a bizarre tale of disaster at sea.

First, she told the authorities, Von Morgenland had stopped at an uninhabited island off the west coast of Panama. Then, four days later, he had docked at another island where people “dressed in rags and undernourished” helped him paint the boat and make minor repairs in exchange for food and clothing. The name Ta Aroa was changed to Esperanza.

Carmen had no idea where Von Morgenland planned to go next, but authorities surmise that he had decided to sail to Brazil, which has no extradition treaty with Costa Rica or the United States. He was still a Brazilian citizen, and Southern Brazil, with its large mix of Europeans, would, with any luck, swallow him up.

It is also thought likely that he was planning to avoid detection at sea by bypassing the Panama Canal, sailing around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. This is one of the most hazardous voyages on earth and only a man of tremendous skill – or tremendous ego – would undertake such a journey in a 50-foot yacht.

As it turned out, the Ta Aroa/Esperanza never got that far. On Oct. 12, in Colombian waters, the boat hit a reef in Solano Bay. The bow split open, and water poured in.

It is not difficult to imagine Von Morgenland’s despair as the yacht began sinking. She was his long-planned salvation, his escape, his obsession. He had coveted her, plotted meticulously to possess her, and now she was going down beneath him.

“Von Morgenland ordered us to abandon the yacht and take as much as possible before she sank,” Carmen recalled. “Which it did about three hours later.”

The foursome made it safely ashore in the dinghy to the town of Puerto Solano. Von Morgenland told the local authorities that his yacht had gone down because his crewman, Pete Smith, had run off.

Taking sympathy on the unfortunate party, the mayor of Puerto Solano arranged for transportation aboard a military airplane headed to Medellin, Colombia.

Before leaving Puerto Solano, Von Morgenland sold the dinghy and outboard motor, so that when the group arrived in Medellin it had few possessions. The self-proclaimed treasure hunter had loaded his prized sacks of shells and artifacts aboard the Ta Aroa in Golfito, but they had been lost as the yacht went down.

In Medellin, Carmen became hysterical when Von Morgenland informed her that she, Rita and Wilhelm would be going on to Bogota, the Colombian capital.

They had already been away for a month, and a “casual cruise” down the Central American coast aboard a “borrowed” yacht had turned into an incomprehensible web of maneuvers and lies.

Carmen insisted on returning home, and Von Morgenland finally let her go. He had no way of knowing that the bodies of Sederlund and Hackett had already been discovered or that he was now being sought by police. And either it did not occur to him that Carmen would eventually be questioned by investigators, or he figured that he would be safely in Brazil before he could be apprehended.

Meanwhile, back in Golfito, funeral services were being held for Jack Sederlund and Yvonne Hackett. Saddened friends and acquaintances turned out to mourn and pay their respects. Condolences were sent to the couple’s families with profound regret that in a place as peaceful and hospitable as Golfito, such a tragedy could happen.

And Wolfgang von Morgenland? In the nearly 22 years since he arrived in Medellin after taking the Ta Aroa on her last, fatal voyage, he, his wife Rita and son Wilhelm have never been seen or heard from.

JIM KERR is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Sunshine.

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Photograph: TA'AROA A-50 and INFIDEL A-56 on Waitematā Harbour

Maker Unknown Production date 1960s-1970s: Likely date range See full details

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Cruising the Moskva River: A short guide to boat trips in Russia’s capital

There’s hardly a better way to absorb Moscow’s atmosphere than on a ship sailing up and down the Moskva River. While complicated ticketing, loud music and chilling winds might dampen the anticipated fun, this checklist will help you to enjoy the scenic views and not fall into common tourist traps.

How to find the right boat?

There are plenty of boats and selecting the right one might be challenging. The size of the boat should be your main criteria.

Plenty of small boats cruise the Moskva River, and the most vivid one is this yellow Lay’s-branded boat. Everyone who has ever visited Moscow probably has seen it.

This option might leave a passenger disembarking partially deaf as the merciless Russian pop music blasts onboard. A free spirit, however, will find partying on such a vessel to be an unforgettable and authentic experience that’s almost a metaphor for life in modern Russia: too loud, and sometimes too welcoming. Tickets start at $13 (800 rubles) per person.

Bigger boats offer smoother sailing and tend to attract foreign visitors because of their distinct Soviet aura. Indeed, many of the older vessels must have seen better days. They are still afloat, however, and getting aboard is a unique ‘cultural’ experience. Sometimes the crew might offer lunch or dinner to passengers, but this option must be purchased with the ticket. Here is one such  option  offering dinner for $24 (1,490 rubles).

If you want to travel in style, consider Flotilla Radisson. These large, modern vessels are quite posh, with a cozy restaurant and an attentive crew at your service. Even though the selection of wines and food is modest, these vessels are still much better than other boats.

Surprisingly, the luxurious boats are priced rather modestly, and a single ticket goes for $17-$32 (1,100-2,000 rubles); also expect a reasonable restaurant bill on top.

How to buy tickets?

Women holding photos of ships promise huge discounts to “the young and beautiful,” and give personal invitations for river tours. They sound and look nice, but there’s a small catch: their ticket prices are usually more than those purchased online.

“We bought tickets from street hawkers for 900 rubles each, only to later discover that the other passengers bought their tickets twice as cheap!”  wrote  (in Russian) a disappointed Rostislav on a travel company website.

Nevertheless, buying from street hawkers has one considerable advantage: they personally escort you to the vessel so that you don’t waste time looking for the boat on your own.

Prices start at $13 (800 rubles) for one ride, and for an additional $6.5 (400 rubles) you can purchase an unlimited number of tours on the same boat on any given day.

Flotilla Radisson has official ticket offices at Gorky Park and Hotel Ukraine, but they’re often sold out.

Buying online is an option that might save some cash. Websites such as  this   offer considerable discounts for tickets sold online. On a busy Friday night an online purchase might be the only chance to get a ticket on a Flotilla Radisson boat.

This  website  (in Russian) offers multiple options for short river cruises in and around the city center, including offbeat options such as ‘disco cruises’ and ‘children cruises.’ This other  website  sells tickets online, but doesn’t have an English version. The interface is intuitive, however.

Buying tickets online has its bad points, however. The most common is confusing which pier you should go to and missing your river tour.

“I once bought tickets online to save with the discount that the website offered,” said Igor Shvarkin from Moscow. “The pier was initially marked as ‘Park Kultury,’ but when I arrived it wasn’t easy to find my boat because there were too many there. My guests had to walk a considerable distance before I finally found the vessel that accepted my tickets purchased online,” said the man.

There are two main boarding piers in the city center:  Hotel Ukraine  and  Park Kultury . Always take note of your particular berth when buying tickets online.

Where to sit onboard?

Even on a warm day, the headwind might be chilly for passengers on deck. Make sure you have warm clothes, or that the crew has blankets ready upon request.

The glass-encased hold makes the tour much more comfortable, but not at the expense of having an enjoyable experience.

Getting off the boat requires preparation as well. Ideally, you should be able to disembark on any pier along the way. In reality, passengers never know where the boat’s captain will make the next stop. Street hawkers often tell passengers in advance where they’ll be able to disembark. If you buy tickets online then you’ll have to research it yourself.

There’s a chance that the captain won’t make any stops at all and will take you back to where the tour began, which is the case with Flotilla Radisson. The safest option is to automatically expect that you’ll return to the pier where you started.

If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

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