Martin:

>I'm afraid I have some bad news for Grant - according to official New
>Zealand charts (NZ 223F and 224F) the mooted high seas enclave between
>the EEZs generated by North Island and the Kermadek Islands doesn't
>exist although, as you will see from the attached extract from 223F,
>it's very close (I reckon the gap is about 2 nautical miles).

Curses and thanks in equal proportions!
This, of course, fits with what Brendan's stamp was telling me all
along. (Though I'd guess a bit of artistic licence on the stamp -
otherwise it would need to be the size of a nautical chart to show the
gap accurately. Where would you find an envelope big enough to use
that?) My calcs gave me an *overlap* on the order of a few kilometres,
but that was assuming a spherical Earth with a radius equal to the
average radius between North Island and the Kermadecs. I thought the
resulting error would be trivial, but clearly not. Or perhaps the New
Zealanders are not basing their EEZ on the small offshore island I
spotted as closest to l'Esperance. That would be odd, though, given
their undoubted use of uninhabitable l'Esperance Rock to define the
Kermadecs EEZ.

>The charts
>do however, confirm the existence of a small high seas enclave between
>South Island, the Bounty Islands and the Chatham Islands.

There should be another, larger, one bounded by South Island, Antipodes
and Campbell, too. Yes?

Thanks again (grrr),

Grant