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Australian solo sailor Lisa Blair has embarked on a new world record attempt - on a 2,200 nm circumnavigation around New Zealand not yet recorded.
Blair set off aboard her yacht Climate Action Now from North Head this morning and will attempt to sail from Auckland to Auckland - less than a month after smashing the solo speed record from Sydney to Auckland by more than four days.
Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron (RNZYS) race management volunteers were there to record Blair's official start time and wish her well as she set a course north out to Great Barrier Island.
She has now begun a journey to see her rounding New Zealand’s northernmost point at Cape Reinga where two oceans collide as she crosses from the Pacific Ocean to the Tasman Sea. Her progress can be followed via a live tracker here.
The voyage is expected to take 18 days. It will take her down the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island heading into a predicted storm-force wind system around New Plymouth before she crosses Cook Strait and into headwinds all down the West Coast of the South Island.
As Blair reaches the south Fiordland region, she will have no shelter from the Southern Ocean storms and dangerous swells before pressing south to round Stewart Island and the Southwest Cape where the sea depth dramatically reduces from 5km to 50m on the shelf causing noted rogue waves.
Turning northwards past Dunedin, headwinds are again predicted and major commercial fishing grounds with long-line nets will provide a hazard before heading into major commercial and recreational boating regions up the coast. This will test her resilience with 20-minute micro sleeps the whole journey home to avoid dangerous traffic and hazards.
The record, to be adjudicated by the RNZYS in collaboration with the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) and the World Sailing Speed Record Council (WSSRC), will require Blair's course to enclose the whole of New Zealand including all rocks and islands lying within 8nm of the mainland – a rhumb line distance of 2,200nm, although her journey will be much longer to sail.
Lisa Blair has set off on a circumnavigation of New Zealand. Photos / Corrina Ridgeway
Blair is an ardent promoter of climate action with her several world record journeys involving the collection of microplastic samples for scientific analysis and raising awareness of ocean pollution issues as well as advocacy for solutions and change for the health of the ocean.
“I want to see a happy and healthy planet and people won’t protect what they can’t
understand, so I try to share my love of the ocean and this planet with my records. I think adventurers have a responsibility to become storytellers and communicators,” said Blair, who was named 2022 Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year.
Her sustainability journey first started in 2012 while sailing around the world in the Clipper
Round the World Yacht Race.
“We were more than 20 days from land sailing across the Southern Ocean from South Africa to New Zealand. I was at the helm looking out when we crested a wave and there, off our bow was a Styrofoam box floating past. We were thousands of miles from land in the most remote regions of the planet and I was seeing plastic. I couldn’t believe it.”
In 2015 Blair launched her Climate Action Now message and began collecting post-it-note messages from people in the public. Her yacht Climate Action Now is adorned with thousands of messages of environmental actions from members of the community.
She is the current world record holder for sailing solo, non-stop and unassisted around Antarctica in 2022, breaking the record by 10 days to add to her four previous world records and now two new pending Sydney to Auckland records.
Blair has also teamed up with filmmakers Nathaniel C. T. Jackson and James Blannin-Ferguson to make a feature-length documentary tracking her ambitious and treacherous solo voyage around Antarctica. Screenings of the world premiere of Ice Maiden will be at the Doc Edge Festival in Christchurch from June 19 to 30, in Auckland (July 3-14), Wellington (July 3-14) and then nationwide via the virtual cinema (July 15-31).
