Sailing to New Zealand & Cruising Fiordland

Sailing to New Zealand had always been a lifetime dream of mine. Well, almost a lifetime. Because for at least fifty of my sixty-plus years, the desire to voyage from Melbourne to New Zealand had existed. Not that it was originally my idea. Not completely. It first started with my sea-loving Kiwi father and older brother, and somehow it imbued itself into my DNA way back in my formative, teen years in the 1970s.

So here I was in January 2020, setting out for what I thought would be a would-be a4-month trans-Tasman jaunt. In the words of Bilbo Baggins (of Lord of the Rings fame), a simple case of…“there and back again”.

Little did I know, that within three short months, New Zealand, Australia and the world, would be plunged into a global pandemic, from which none of us could escape; least of all those at sea. In the end, four months turned into eighteen months, comprising lockdowns, red tape, hotel quarantine, Customs considerations, bureaucratic farce, and suspicion.

A voyage forty years in the making and complicated by the impact of COVID-19, sailor Rob Latimer sails his yacht Chimere in the wake of Captain Cook, leading us on a journey through New Zealand’s rugged and remote Fiordland.

Read part one of Sailing to New Zealand & Cruising Fiordland in the June AHOY Sailing News.