Drinks Trolley and Wired outlast the calm as 10 racers beat the Coastal Classic deadline

Rob Bassett and Brett Russell’s Wired took line honours in the 2026 PIC Coastal Classic in just under 25 hours. Nicholas Gardiner’s Drinks Trolley won on PHRF, while only ten racing boats beat the 2pm cut-off at Russell.

Light winds and long calms turned the 2026 PIC Coastal Classic into a race against the clock. For some crews the 2pm deadline loomed larger than the finish line.

Rob Bassett and Brett Russell’s Bakewell-White 52 Wired crossed the line off Russell at 10.58am on Saturday 24 October. Her elapsed time was 24 hours, 58 minutes and 25 seconds. With so little wind forecast, beating the 2019 record was never on the cards. Nine more racing boats followed before the 2pm deadline for handicap prizes. Of the 87 starters, the race organisers report, only those ten racing boats and six from the cruising rally completed the 119 nautical mile course in time. Twelve more racing boats reached the line after 2pm, earning placings but missing out on handicap prizes.

First monohull on PHRF was Nicholas Gardiner’s modified Thompson 30 Drinks Trolley. She crossed the line at 1.21pm, with less than 40 minutes to spare.

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2026 PIC Coastal Classic

Before the start

The fleet gathers off Devonport ahead of the 9.45am and 10am starts. Tap any photograph to view it at full size.

Photography: Roger Mills / Boating New Zealand.

A slow race, and everyone knew it

Around 100 boats entered, but last year’s line honours winner Lucky and runner-up Callisto did not return for the 2026 race.

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Romanza brought a proven Coastal Classic record, having taken line honours in 2024. Several monohulls also arrived with strong recent results. Clockwork had taken Three Kings line honours and won on handicap at Richmond Yacht Club’s Spring Regatta. Equilibrium was first home in that Spring Regatta, while Wired took monohull line honours in the Roy McDell Memorial Race.

Explore Racing had won overall line honours in the 2026 Doyle Sails Round North Island Two Handed Yacht Race. Motorboat III finished second overall on both elapsed and corrected time, giving her credentials for the handicap contest too. Malcolm Dickson’s Sarau also had handicap form, having won the Solo Trans-Tasman on corrected time in June. Defending Coastal overall PHRF winner Starmaker was entered, but in the end did not start.

2026 PIC Coastal Classic

On the start line

Photography: Roger Mills / Boating New Zealand.

The light wind forecast was already shaping crews’ plans. At the Forecast and Tactics Clinic on the Monday before the start, Doyle Sails’ Mike Sanderson told crews to plan for a long, light race: leave anyone who wasn’t keen at home, clean the bottom and keep climbing the ladder towards Russell rather than chasing every puff. At Thursday night’s briefing, PredictWind’s Nick Olson told skippers to expect about seven knots, a gradient fading through Friday and a soft patch past Cape Rodney. “It’s going to be long,” he said.

Plenty of sailors came anyway, and some had stories worth the trip. Peter Bourke, 74, entered the 1970 kauri Sparkman & Stephens Half Tonner Diablo he restored and then sailed alone across the Tasman in June, single-handed again. Fellow Tasman finisher Ben Ball raced solo in his 1976 Cavalier 36 Camellia. Malcolm Dickson, 79 and the Solo Trans-Tasman’s handicap winner in June, sailed his 55-foot Sarau two-handed with his 16-year-old granddaughter Lily. In the rally, Ian Ashton’s Dream Weaver, which spent its earlier life as the YouTube boat La Vagabonde, set off with its crew dressed as pirates.

Last year’s close finishes promised some rematches, none more than Another Duchess against Wired, which she beat to Russell by 59 seconds on elapsed time in 2025.

Friday: a reasonable start, then nothing

The fleet got away from Devonport under a grey sky, the small boats and solo sailors at 9.30am, Divisions 2 and 3 at 9.45 and the big boats at 10. The race organisers put the breeze at six to eight knots from the southwest, enough for a square run towards the Tiri Channel with the ebb under them.

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Another Duchess led the racing divisions through the channel at noon, about six minutes ahead of Wired. By Flat Rock at 2.07pm, Wired had turned that round and was six minutes clear.

North of Kawau the breeze went away. By early evening boats on the tracker were logging 0.0 and 0.1 knots, and crews started doing the sums. Moulet, on Another Duchess, said they worked out that even at hull speed they’d make only about four knots towards Cape Brett overnight. “And you just won’t make the finish at two o’clock,” he said. Another Duchess picked up a mooring at Kawau and went home.

Damon Jolliffe’s Motorboat III turned back too. So did Bourke, who had told us before the start that Kawau was his first checkpoint and that if he didn’t reach it in time, “I’d probably go home, mow the lawns or something.” He missed his checkpoint. “I wasn’t going to make the cut-off time for the end of the race, so I’m pulling out at Kawau,” he said. By Friday night the anchors were going down all along the coast. By morning 38 racing boats had pulled out. The official results list 58 as did not finish (DNF), and none of the three solo entrants recorded a finish: Ben Ball’s Camellia and Mike Phear’s Bull 12000 Bullistic are listed as DNF alongside Diablo.

2026 PIC Coastal Classic

Heading out of the harbour

The fleet rounds Bastion Point and heads north. Tap any photograph to view it at full size.

Photography: Roger Mills / Boating New Zealand.

Saturday: Wired finds a way through

Wired kept going. She was the first racing boat to call in at Sail Rock, at 8.56pm on Friday, and kept edging north through the hours the forecast models had shown as a hole. She rounded Cape Brett at 6.41am. The last 11 miles into the Bay of Islands, in fading air, took her more than four hours.

The crew had split into two watches, something they wouldn’t normally bother with for a Coastal Classic. “As time goes on, tempers can start to fray,” Bassett said in the race organisers’ report. “It comes down to the calibre of your crew and their ability to keep changing gears all the way up the coast.” He called the race “a bit of a celebration” for a boat that has now been racing for 20 years.

With the other four Division 1A boats retired, Wired won the division on line and handicap as well.

The multihulls came next. Erle Williams’ catamaran Apache finished at 12.05pm and Romanza at 12.21pm. Then four Division 1B boats arrived inside 18 minutes: General Lee, sailed by Cameron Thorpe and Tim Holgate, at 12.32pm, Chris Middleweek’s Revs at 12.40pm, Chris Hornell’s Blue Dude at 12.45pm and Alegre at 12.50pm.

Division 2 went down to the last hour. Mike Elley’s Nosaka finished at 1.20pm, and Drinks Trolley followed her in 54 seconds later. Division 1B’s Perfect Storm was the last racing boat home inside the time limit, at 1.29pm. Motorboat II was less than a mile from the line when the clock ran out.

Not everyone stopped when it did. In Division 2, Kevin Peet’s Blackout, Brian Watson’s Savante, Ryan McCready’s Physical Favours and Chris Marsh’s Boogie Flash reached the line between about 10pm and 11pm. In Division 3, Malcolm and Lily Dickson kept Sarau going all the way to Russell, along with Peter Cunningham’s J/112E Ticketty Boo, and both reached the line late on Saturday night, more than 37 hours after starting. The other 16 Division 3 boats, Camellia among them, were listed DNF. Division 4 followed the same pattern, with Luke Judge’s Ross 930 Wasted Away and Sam Kynman-Cole’s Elliott 9 Hot Property reaching Russell late that night, about 38 hours out of Devonport. So did four boats from Division 5.

The results

Drinks Trolley took first monohull overall on PHRF, with a corrected time of 23 hours 36 minutes, seven minutes and 30 seconds ahead of Nosaka. In Division 1B, General Lee was first across the line but Revs won on PHRF by two minutes.

Apache took multihull line honours, and Romanza won the multihulls on handicap. Blue Dude was both the first Bay of Islands boat and the smallest boat to finish. The top-team prize went to RNZYS 2, made up of General Lee, Romanza and Alegre.

Boats that finished after 2pm aren’t eligible for the handicap prizes, and the official TopYacht results don’t treat them all the same way. The four late Division 2 boats are scored TLE, time limit expired, with no handicap placing. In Divisions 3 to 5, the late finishers are ranked. Among those late arrivals, Sarau headed Division 3 on corrected time, 13 minutes ahead of Ticketty Boo, which had reached the line first, and she also tops the double-handed table. Hot Property topped Division 4 on corrected time, 14 minutes ahead of Wasted Away, which again had been first to the line. Division 5 went the same way. Lanny Walker’s SR26 T-Rex led Daniel Wise’s Young 88 Young Mischief, Holger Zipfel’s Buoy Racer and Trish Beken’s Chico Too to the line, but the handicap order turned right round, with Chico Too first, Buoy Racer second, Young Mischief third and T-Rex fourth.

In the rally, which allows motoring, Steven Dunlop’s catamaran My Fix was first into Russell at 2.41am on Saturday, four minutes ahead of Adrian Percival’s Lady Nada. Ian Ashton’s Dream Weaver was third, and Bruce Ellingham’s Tiki won the prize for least motoring.

Source: PIC Coastal Classic race organisers and TopYacht results. Boats finishing after the 2pm cut-off are not eligible for handicap prizes.

Rosé at 2pm

Chico Too, the only all-women crew in the race, was still out there when the time limit passed, and her crew marked the moment by opening a bottle of rosé. Then they kept sailing, reaching Russell late that night and heading Division 5 on corrected time. At the prizegiving at the Nauti Penguin, crews who had stuck with the race were called up on stage and handed a bottle of Mount Gay rum, and the celebrations ashore went on for hours.

The New Zealand Multihull Yacht Club’s Simon Hull summed up the weekend in a line: “someone forgot to pay the wind bill!” The 2027 PIC Coastal Classic starts on Friday 22 October.