 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.CND New Zealand, who had its roots in the British anti bomb movement, had been actively campaigning against Nuclear tests not only in French Polynesia but against the British atomic bomb tests in Australia and the South Pacific since the 1950s.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.