South Pacific Liveaboard Opportunity

Great opportunity for experienced sailors to experience the live-aboard and cruising life-style from Tahiti en-route to New Zealand, via Tonga.
When: June to November 2020
What: we are taking PERIGEE, our 16m ketch, from French Polynesia to New Zealand. We expect the transit to take ~70 days, visiting Bora Bora, Suwarrow, Niue, and Tonga enroute to New Zealand. The passage expectation is ~25 days underway, including overnight passages, with some day-sailing around and in-between islands. We’re comfortable sailing coastal and offshore ‘two-up’, but are testing the waters to open the crew-list to provide opportunities for like-minded folk to join us as we make the iconic passage exploring the Tongan Island group.
The Boat: PERIGEE, a 2003 AMEL Super Maramu, is a 16m ketch designed and built to the European Cat A standard, certified to carry 8 people on all oceans, unrestricted. Fitted out in classic but unique style, ‘doing it tough’ is not in the AMEL design brief. PERIGEE is equipped to meet SOLAS requirements for the passage, such as a 6-person liferaft (new 2016), PFDs & harnesses, HF & satellite comms, flares, EPIRB, and so on. Many recent upgrades to equipment and systems.
Schedule: depart Tahiti late-June through to mid-July, to be in the Bay of Islands NZ in late-October through mid-November. Sailing distance: >8,000nm, underway average 150nm per day.