Setting out from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 2018, Jeff Bolster and his wife, Molly, hoped to circumnavigate on their Valiant 40, Chanticleer. After port-calls in the Caribbean, Panama, Galapagos, French Polynesia, Cook Islands and the Kingdom of Tonga, they were in New Zealand waiting for South Pacific cyclone season to end when Covid-19 broke out, interrupting their voyage. Dealt lemons, they made lemonade, cruising New Zealand’s northern coast for 19 months, until leaving their boat and flying back to the U.S. Jeff and Molly plan to return to the boat in late 2022. Jeff’s thoughts on pulling off the voyage of a lifetime will appear in a few installments in Soundings. This is the second.
We knew that heading for the South Pacific
