The weather is good, the seas calm and the winds light. Europa gently sails with all her canvas set but for the Gaff Topsail.

The mountainous coasts of New Zealand are still visible in the horizon, ahead the vast expanse of the South Pacific.

She carries now over 20 sails and she is equipped with modern navigation equipment for her adventures at sea, relying on on technology such as GPS and radar. Nowadays the sea, islands and coastlines are mapped and charted too, both as paper and digital charts.

In contrast, the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions, the Pacific Ocean is historically the home for the best traditional navigators and wayfinders.

The Polynesian mariners, who, thanks to their skills and deep knowledge of the stars, winds, currents, swells and waves, the different species of birds, their habits and migration patterns, and the differences on the clouds in the sky, could sail across this large Ocean discovering and colonising new lands using little more than their memory.

They used large double-hulled canoes some of which were even longer than Cook’s ship, the Endeavour. Captain Cook, the great explorer of the 18th Century met them on his trips all over the Pacific Ocean, carrying just one or two sails depending on their size and origin. The Polynesian idiosyncratic culture and social structure with a unique oceanic world view, allowed for their adaptation to voyaging and settling of new lands.

Passing through Melanesia they soon reached Tonga and Samoa, and then once they arrived to the island groups of Cook and Tahiti area, they set sail north to Hawaii, East to Rapa Rui and southwards to New Zealand.

Cook, in turn, was impressed enough with both the practical seamanship and navigational skills of the Tahitians, and their wide geographical knowledge, to accept that which had been unthinkable to earlier European voyagers: that the ancestors of these islanders must have sailed into the Pacific on their own, covering great distances in their canoes, orienting themselves by observing the celestial bodies. Unfortunately, Cook never developed his thoughts beyond a few lines in his journal, which include elements basic to a modern theory of Polynesian settlement: an acceptance that Tahitian canoes were seaworthy and capable of sailing at least "two or three hundred leagues" (600 to 900 nautical miles), that the Tahitians had a "compass" provided by the sun, moon and stars and that they used this to orient themselves at sea, and that their ancestors could have employed this technology to move, from island to island, all the way from the "East Indias" (roughly modern Indonesia) to Tahiti. 

- William Henry Giles Kingston. “Captain Cook. His Life, Voyages and Discoveries”. 1871

Sure well known by the Polynesian navigators, these waters are also home for a whole other sort of ocean wanderers, the admirable albatrosses. And today was a good day to have good look at some of them.

Having in mind the difficulties on the proper identification amongst some of the species of the genus Thalassarche we spotted today about 7 of a worldwide diversity of approximately 20 species (a number that is still a matter of some debate).

Lack of wind makes for them to sit and wait, occasionally trying one of their majestic soaring flights when the breeze increases.

Northern, Southern and Wandering albatrosses, the three of the largest species of flying birds in the world shared the day with us. The three of them truly nomads of the seas, covering astounding distances gliding over the swells of some of the fiercest and windiest areas of the planet all around the southern high latitudes. As such, they are a group of species that will be our travel companions all the way until the end of our trip at Falkland Islands.

Amongst those great albatrosses (Diomedea genus), a variety of mollymawks (Thalassarche), some of them species virtually inseparable at sea, like the White capped and Shy, and their close relatives Salvin’s and Buller albatrosses which distribution is more restricted around the Western part of the South Pacific in comparison with the more widespread Black browed. Nevertheless gliding over the sea when they are not busy breeding, they can spread all the way to the Chilean Patagonian shores from here.

Now and then a solitary Giant petrel pass by while groups of the endemic Grey faced petrel join the rest of the many seabirds sotted today. The whole of their population, between 200 to 300 thousand breeding pairs can be found on the many islands, stacks and headlands of the North New Zealand Island. Their movements at sea range around New Zealand to the Tasmanian waters, as well as the subantarctic area of this region.

Wanderers, wayfarers, real seabirds as they are, all of them enjoy a life in the open ocean, but they are able to find every breeding season their nesting grounds distributed all along the South Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.