Part 37, page 410

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

del Rey in October, 1970, settling into a berth at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after cruising down the Mexican coastline, through the Panama Canal and exploring the coastline of Venezuela and Colombia and the islands of the British West Indies and the Bahamas aboard the 54-foot wooden yawl which had won the 1926 Bermuda Race with designer Alden at her helm and a schooner rig.

"Malabar VII," one of a dozen and a half boats personally owned by Alden at launching, was offered for sale by the Streeches who left her in Fort Lauderdale and returned to the West Coast, Dan to Dana Point where he began selling boats, and his dad to the family home in Arizona.

"This man who called himself Mike Selzer decided to buy our boat," Dan said, "and he'd looked at a lot of boats. He may have bought ours because we were willing to take his camper as a trade-in. This was about two months after Cooper had made his getaway from the airplane.

"Selzer drove his camper to my folks' home in Arizona, and they spent a lot of time visiting before he took off for Florida. My dad says Selzer mentioned he had worked as a smoke jumper."

Six weeks after Selzer delivered the camper "nearly new, with only 2,000 miles on it," Dan said the F.B.I. turned up at the Streech home "and the agents said the man we knew as Selzer fitted the description of Cooper perfectly. The F.B.I. men also said some of the money Cooper bailed out with had turned up in Las Vegas."

"Malabar VII" with new owner Mike Selzer has never turned up anywhere, Dan added.

BACK PACKING IN FRENCH POLYNESIA

Dan was on his way to the Tahiti airport after three weeks of hiking around the islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea and Bora Bora with a back pack. He'd gone from one island to another as a passenger on the copra boat "Tapora III," hiking days and sleeping nights on the beaches. He said the land-crabs didn't chew on him (the local rumor that keeps visitors from camping on the beaches) and very few mosquitos took a bite: "I was taking Vitamins B 12 and B 6 and I understand if you do that, the mosquitos aren't interested. Anyway, I only got one or two bites a day."

He spent about $300 in three weeks (plus $750 round-trip air fare from Los Angeles) and most of the places where he camped were near native huts "and the Tahitians brought me food." He recalled buying "mostly bread, with lots of peanut butter and jelly."

In his back pack: a sleeping bag, a bedsheet, swim fins and mask, Sterno and freeze-dried food, one pair of long pants, one pair of cut-offs, a swim suit "and three or four shirts."

On Bora Bora, Dan spent two days reading a ship's log kept by Hans Fleish "at the Oa Oa, or perhaps you spell it Oahoa Hotel. Hans caters to visiting yachts and has free hot showers for boating people. Then he asks them to write about their voyages in his log. Some people even draw pictures. I couldn't stop reading [guess: plus] at [guess: C...] [illegible]

A night [guess: or] [guess: two] [guess: in] the [guess: south] [illegible] [guess: can] [illegible], recalled, that's unusually [guess: reasonable] [illegible] an [illegible] [illegible] [illegible] [illegible]atus, where a room or bungalow may run as high as $95 a night and the average is about $50 with two meals.

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DB Cooper-14594