Fri (yacht)

In 1971 under her new owners American David Moodie and his brothers, the Fri sailed from Hawaii to New Zealand crewed by a group of hippie consumer escapes, in search of adventure and an alternative lifestyle down-under.

[5][7][8] Within days of Fri's arrival in Auckland from Hawaii in April 1972, the crew of Fri were approached by Mabel Hetherington from CNDNZ (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (NZ)) and Barry Mitcalfe from Peace Media, and sounded out as to whether they might be interested in joining a planned flotilla of protest yachts which would sail in an act of civil disobedience into the Mururoa exclusion zone in French Polynesia to attempt to disrupt French atmospheric nuclear tests there.

In 1963, the Auckland CND campaign submitted its "No Bombs South of the Line" petition to the Parliament of New Zealand with 80,238 signatures calling on the government to sponsor an international conference to discuss establishing a nuclear-free zone in the Southern Hemisphere.

[5] David Moodie, the owner and captain of the Fri did initially express some reservations as to the preparedness of his yacht for the proposed 5391-kilometer (3350 mile) mission.

[9] The protest initiative sought to create sufficient negative publicity against the French and to force them towards a nuclear test ban in Polynesia.

[1] In a symbolic act of protest, New Zealand's Labour government of Norman Kirk sent two of its navy frigates, HMNZS Canterbury and Otago, into the test zone area.

According to French journalist Luis Gonzales-Mata of Actual magazine in 1976, large numbers of Polynesians had been secretly sent on military flights to Paris for treatment for cancer.