Champagne conditions challenge Classic fleet

Frank Racing claimed its eight victory in the PIC Coastal Classic yacht race on Friday.

The giant red Orma 60 trimaran sailed into Russell shortly after 5pm, completing the 119 nautical mile course in 7 hours 8 minutes and well ahead of the rest of the field, with the next boats coming in shortly before midnight.

Frank has now won every race since 2010 except for 2013 when Team Australia, an identical boat, stole the spotlight.

Widely regarded as marking the start of the competitive summer boating season, this 36th running of the PIC Coastal Classic saw a fleet of 165 boats starting off Auckland’s Devonport Wharf, bound for Russell in the Bay of Islands.

While the early summer conditions of sunshine and a steady easterly were described by one commentator as “champagne sailing” weather, they also prevented any new records being made.

The challenging conditions made the race a real test of strategy and with the wind becoming progressively lighter through the day and into the night, with many boats struggled to pick where the breeze would carry them into the finish line and a large part of the fleet finishing in fog early on Saturday morning. (One crew member aboard Carpe Diem described the final run into the finish line from Cape Brett like “a turtle chasing its prey”.)

Simon Hull, the owner and skipper of Frank Racing, said conditions were light the whole way.

“It got quite light off Kawau and then we had to do a couple sail changes up to our big Code Zero until the breeze filled in a bit. We went out round Hen and Chicks on a two-sail reach all the way to Cape Brett, and then it was a smooth run in from there.”

Multihulls Kotuku and Cation were the next two boats over the finish line, while the first monohulls in were the new 66’ Awen, and TP52s Mayhem and Wired (with Peter Burling helming; while Blair Tuke sailed aboard Bay of Islands entry Deep Throttle).

Notable was the race’s first solo female entrant, Tamsin Worsley, who persevered through 27 hours of racing without any self-steering devices to eventually cross the finish line at 12.40pm on Saturday, just in time for her mum’s birthday lunch at The Duke of Marlborough Hotel at 1.30pm. In addition, Tamsin’s brother Matthew Flynn was the first solo sailor across the finish line this year; he also won the inaugural trophy for single-handed sailors in last year’s event.

PROVISIONAL RESULTS are, overall line honours: Frank Racing, first monohull: Awen, multihull 8.5: Tigre (line and handicap), Division 1a: Awen (line), V5 (PHRF), Division 1b: Ice Breaker (line and handicap), Division 2: Zealous (line and handicap), Division 3: Party Girl (line and handicap), Division 4: E-Nine (line and handicap), Division 5: Manga II (line and handicap), Division 6: Frank Racing (line and handicap), Division 7: Exodus (line and handicap), Division 8: Infarred (line and handicap), Division 9, solo entrants: Krakatoa II.

■ The PIC Coastal Classic is New Zealand's biggest coastal yacht race and has marked the start of the summer boating season for 36 years. The current race record was set by Team Vodafone Sailing (now named Frank Racing) in 2014 with a time of 5 hours, 13 minutes.