RNI 2h leg 2: The Toughest In The History Of The RNI Race

580 nm, 5.5 days. 38 boats started, 15 boats withdrawn, 23 boats left.

Predictably, after the previous day's racing, the start at Mangonui was in very light wind. As we motored out to the start line there was absolutely no wind. At the start gun, we had about 5 knots with slight increases from there but staying below 10 knots.

Before the restart at Mangonui - no wind again!

The sail to North Cape was pleasant - gentle zephyrs, but again not Young 11 weather. The big overlappping headsails on the local boats came out again and we fell behind due to lack of sail area. We managed to stay within the vicinity of our friends on Midnight Express and a few other similar length boats as the faster fleet took off.

Midnight Express goes in close on the way from Mangonui to North Cape

Approaching North Cape at sunset

After sailing all day, about 10 boats ended up fairly close together while rounding North Cape at sunset. We sailed into the night with numerous mast lights around us. At one point we counted that we were 15th from the back (or 23rd from the front!) - about where we should have been in the fleet. During the small hours of the morning, there were 7 or 8 boats tacking across the top of the coast from North Cape to Cape Reinga, in about 10 knots of breeze, flat water, lovely moonlight, and warm air. This turned into a surreal, wonderful tacking competition for a few hours, and CV crept her way through this small section of the fleet aided by the TackTick lift-ometer and Otto the autohelm while Vesna slept down below.

Looking east towards moonrise, port (red) and startboard (green) mast lights from the boats tacking their way between North Cape and Cape Reinga behind us


Things started to get a little interesting at Cape Reinga. A fishing vessel was using Channel 16 to cope with the flurry of yachts that were trying to round the Cape. His words were "get away from me you lot!". A few boats tried to make contact with the fishing vessel to establish its intentions - e.g location and approximate trawling area. No luck on that front. We kept away from the fishing vessel but it cost us a lot of time. In the delay, the tide changed against us (we were going to make it around with a little tide with us), and the wind and waves had picked up so the tacking around the fishing vessel cost us dearly. There were also hazards to avoid at the Cape including the Pandora Shoals - a notorious area for some serious wave action. The yacht Zen ended up in the Pandora Shoals area and retired with injured crew shortly after. All the good work that TW had put in to pass several yachts was undone by Mr Fishing Vessel not giving details of what they were doing.

The wind built steadily from there as did the waves. This became the theme for the next three days. The swells were coming from two different directions and it became impossible to avoid sailing over every one of the waves and into the troughs. There were a few hairy moments off those waves. There was a 3-4m swell from the south and a 2-3 metre swell from the north, a meeting convened by a 25-30 knot southerly. We headed out to sea as per Expedition's instructions and continued until we were about 92 miles offshore. The shifts for the first 24 hours were 1.5 hours each as it was difficult helming the boat with two different swells and big waves to contend with, and we tried Otto but he couldn't cope and just kept getting confused. A bit of confusion sounds like it might be OK but in these seas and winds, a surprise accidental tack is no fun at all for the rest of the crew. It was an exhausting time for both of us but we worked extremely well as a team and spirits were high. We looked after CV as the advice we had from Kimbo is that if you look after the boat, she will look after you. All made good sense to us and it worked.

One of the reasons for staying within 100 miles of the coast is that the Westpac Trust helicopter exercise that we had in Auckland made it clear that there limit was 100 miles. If they were to do a rescue, they would only have 15 minutes to get us both off the boat. Made sense to stay within that zone "just in case".

Following that 24 hours, we decided we needed a break and started to use Otto. He did a superb job contending with the waves which were still steep. He worked hard and gave us an opportunity to have a break with shifts of 1.5 hours each and checking on night watch every 15 minutes or so. Both of us down below - one sleeping, one keeping watch at night making sure that we did not run into any ships which are the only thing that you can actually see. The person on watch was also responsible for trimming the sails. This break re-energised us and spirits continued to remain high. Expedition was right on track with the wind shift that was expected to turn and assist us into the tack into round Egmont.

We tacked in the middle of the night which was hairy in itself given the sea state and wind. We nailed the tack and started to make track towards Egmont. A day later and Egmont started to appear. A welcome relief to see landscape having not seen land (or another boat) for more than 2 days. Our sail along the coast of Taranaki was wonderful. 15-20 knot breezes and the sea finally subsided from very rough to moderate.

Metservice had advised that the forecast for this area would be ~20 SE for the last run home. We'd accounted for this and expected to make a substantial - maybe 4 miles - gain on the boats near us, probably getting us into about 9th on line - not bad.

While at Egmont, the wind stared to build steadily. We saw over 20 knots and thought that is not the forecast we were expecting. We checked the forecast again. Still saying 20 knot SE. At 26 knots we decided to tuck in a reef. As soon as Tony had put in a reef, we decided to put in another one as it was blowing over 30 knots. As darkness fell with a forecast that was unexpected, we were working hard to look after the boat in these conditions. We saw what looked like a fishing vessel over the Rolling Ground just south of Egmont. I radioed the fishing vessel on Channel 16. No response. I then spoke to Taranki Maritime on Channel 16 to establish whether this was a fishing boat and what its intentions were. Maritime Radio advised me that this was probably a gas rig but it could also be a fishing vessel near the gas rig. I felt a little silly as the more I looked at this object now, I could see it was a lit up large area - much bigger than a fishing vessel. Clearly a gas rigs intentions would be very clear - they wouldn't be going anywhere! We tacked to avoid the gas rig.

The wind and sea state steadily built leading us to have to change our heavy weather jib to a storm jib in the middle of the night. TW did the sail change in the most horrendous conditions. Having him on the bow in the middle of the night and needing to keep the boat moving with slight pinching to keep it flat but not oversteering it so that we stopped while being pumelled by waves was not nearly as challenging as having to change the jib with huge seas crashing over the top of you. TW was submerged several times and was completely soaked by the time he came back to the cockpit. We managed to get the most enormous knot on the starboard jib sheet due to all the flapping while changing sails that looked extremely ugly but did not seem to interfere with anything.

We had heard that during the last two days there had been some carnage. Masts had been lost, keels became loose and people had been injured but no serious injuries to report of - mostly bad bruising etc. Some had also hit objects at night - wales, logs and various flotsam. We were lucky - nothing like this to report from Clear Vision. Several diversions from the Cape Reinga back to Monganui had also occurred and diversions to New Plymouth by one of the fastest boats in the fleet. There had been 10 withdrawals during this unscheduled weather pattern.


That 20 knot SE became well in excess of 40 knots with huge seas. Metservice weather forecasting was still reporting 20 SE. As Bardy would say, 20 knots easing to 40! This continued well into the night. We flew off some of those waves with a huge crash. On one crash, TW while trying to change from being soaked, flew from one side of the cabin (he had been sitting down by the mast) to the other. He got a huge whack on his lower back and this is when I started to feel extremely frightened of what might happen to us if one of us couldn't function. I had the EPIRB plan well underway in my head. With his sore back, TW continued to take shifts of 30 minutes as both autohelms had burned out and we had no option but to steer the boat ourselves. We were both soaked to the bone and everything in the boat was wet. The waves crashed over the bow and through the cockpit. There were no dry clothes left and we forgot to eat during the night as we had a bit going on. This made us tired, cold and lethargic. Not a good combination. It was incredible that you could force yourself to sleep while cold and wet on wet squabs while hanging on from all the crashing off waves. By 5am, we were both utterly exhausted and TW was very sore. I tried to have a conversation with TW and noticed that he wasn't quite there. He was clearly hypothermic, very sore and exhausted from the last 12 hours of horrendous conditions. Our morale was low at this point but we had to make a choice of whether to continue to Wellington or seek shelter. We knew that given that it was 40 knots and above in Stevens, that it would be 50 knots in the Cook (more at Terawhiti). We made the choice to divert to D'Urville as it was dangerous to continue in this state.

We thought that if we turned on our engine, we were out of the race. We were feeling very low at this point but felt that we had made the right decision for safety. We motored for 15 miles to D'Urville and went straight to Port Hardy where we knew that there was a mooring we could hang off. This took just over three hours from the time we made this decision as our boat speed into the waves with 40 plus knots blowing was slow. The only benefit was that we could punch through the waves and the ride was slightly easier than under sail alone. It gave us a better pointing angle as well.

Having arrived at Port Hardy at about 9am, we quickly heated up some food, took all our wet weather gear off and started to dry out the boat. Our morale was very low at this point as we had put in so much energy and commitment to be in this race, we had done so well off the Taranaki coastline and we felt that we were now out of it. Everything from the inside of the boat went outside, sails, clothes, squabs etc. We had wagers of how many buckets of water we needed to get out - TW thought 23, I thought 27. Surprisingly it was only 10 (about 100 litres) as the biminy shielded us from some of those huge waves. While at the mooring, we rang Peter and had a chat to him. Peter advised that we weren't necessarily out of the race as we just needed to declare what we had done by way of motoring and speak to David Cooke. After we got our wits about us, we rang David and he was encouraging. He said that we just needed to declare and we would finish the race. This lifted spirits enormously and we decided to get a good nights sleep and wait for the gale force winds to subside in the Cook Strait before making our way home on familiar territory. We lost 17 hours by sheltering at D'Urville.

We left D'Urviille at 6am and motored to exactly the same line that we had started to motor from the previous night. We had not made any forward ground from motoring. We sailed through Stevens Passage in light winds and set off for Wellington. The sea state was calm and the winds light, the sun shining - amazing given its seething nature the morning before.

We had the most idyllic day's sailing - flying the spinnaker from the Chetwoods all the way until about 10 miles short of Terawhiti. This was definitely in the brochure, probably worthy of the front page!

The wind built steadily and we tucked in a reef before we got to Terrawhiti. The wind was meant to build to 35 knots in the evening but this always arrives much earlier at Terrawhiti and the wind factory. The rip was surprisingly calm. We discovered ourselves in the company of a few other boats including Non Stop. We had a race with Non Stop along the coast with our jib top which did overpower us a little. We were both rounding up occasionally. Once we rounded Moaning Minnie, we decided to tuck in out of the tide through Chaffers Passage. Unfortunately, our jib top sheets kept coming off every time we tried to tack within the harbour and Non Stop slipped away from us. At Scorching Bay we decided to do a sail change to be able to point higher and go faster without the inherent problem of our sheets coming loose from the jib top.

At Kau Bay we saw Airship and Whistler III seeing us in. A beautiful sight! Our friends had come out to see us into the harbour. Gucci came too. Horns were blazing and there were lots of welcome home waves.

Wellington was a beautiful sight. This amazing support brought us both to tears. At the finish line there was much hoopla and the crew from Te Ruru boarded out boat. We finished around 7.30pm after an excellent day's sailing. Janine and Chelsea helped us pull down our sails and bring CV into her home berth. All our friends and the amazing folks of RPNYC colleagues were waiting for us at the dock. They swarmed on to the boat after helping us tie up and packed everything away for us.

There were many hugs from everyone. It is simply humbling to have such amazing friends and sailing colleagues and we will keep the memory of our home coming in our hearts for a very long time.

A couple of days rest after the hard yakka from Monganui. The race committee are monitoring weather patterns and departure looks like Wednesday. Given the number of boats that have had to withdraw, we are all being extremely cautious not to expose ourselves or the boats to more bashing up the coast lines.