Glenn Andert’s blog

Three years sailing the South Pacific. First year, San Francisco to New Zealand. The first leg was the big one, 3000 miles to the Marquesas. Note that you can click on the photos to get significantly larger images, should you desire a closer look.

Notice that you can’t even see New Zealand yet, and we’ve just travelled 3000 miles!

Here are our rough travels for the month in the Marquesas, easternmost part of French Polynesia, and one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Next stop the Tuamotus, central part of French Polynesia. Completely different. Instead of volcanic lush jungles with food dropping off trees and no reefs, you have flat atolls with more sparse vegetation, far less abundant food sources, and stunning underwater reefs.

Next stops as you can see on the above chart are The Societies, Cook Islands Raratonga to Penryn to Suwarrow, Samoa, Tonga and finally New Zealand.

Spent the summer in Whangerei during more rennovations on ‘Learjet’.

The following year, 2006, visited Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, as can be seen in this charts:

The time in Fiji was spent in Suva, Beqa, Kadavu, Totoya, Moala, Quamea, Taveuni, and Savusavu, as highlighted by the following chart.

Another passage from Tonga to New Zealand, but this time we were lucky enough to stop at both of the Minerva Reefs, spending more than a week there.

Spent the following summer at Gulf Harbor near Auckland, Wellington and Wanganui.

The 2007 season began with a another passage from New Zealand to Fiji, but with a stop at the Kermadec Islands. We were able to go ashore at Raoul.

See the following chart for the 2007 routing.

The passage back to New Zealand was a bit more eventful than usual, since we were chased by a cyclone, and headed west to New Caledonia to stay out of its way.

The passage from New Caledonia to New Zealand saw us taking the eastern side of North Island due to a threat of strong SW winds on the west side. The leg from New Zealand North Cape to Wellington took longer than the passage from New Caledonia to North Cape!