Nathan Williams has owned Mr Kite II for six years, been to the Three Kings twice, and finished near the front both times. With the 2026 race starting Thursday, he is back for more.
Nathan Williams bought Mr Kite II out of Brisbane in early 2019 and sailed her straight into a pandemic. Before the ink was dry on any race plans, COVID had cleared the calendar. The Round North Island 2020 turned out to be the first real chance to see what the Cape 40 could do in New Zealand waters. She won the 40-foot division.
Since then, Williams and his wife Gill have put her through her paces across the offshore programme, the Coastal Classic, the Gold Cup, and most long-distance races the RNZYS has run. When the Three Kings race returned in 2022, after a gap stretching back to 1978, it went straight into the schedule. Williams has entered every running of the modern event since. He has never finished outside the top four.
The boat
Designed by Andrew Cape and built by Boat Speed Performance in New South Wales, Mr Kite II launched in 2005 as something of a prototype, carrying self-tacking runners, twin canards and a stack of technology that was unusual for the time. A major refit in 2009 brought her closer to a conventional layout, though the canting keel stayed.
At 12.9 metres with a 3.7-metre beam and 2.9-metre draft, she is a carbon fibre boat with one job.
Williams is direct about what she is and is not. Pointing to the online listings and YouTube footage from her Australian racing days, he shrugged off any suggestion of dual purpose: “She’s not a cruiser. She’s a racing boat.”
In the right conditions, the canting keel turns her into something other 40-footers cannot match. In the 2022 Three Kings race, she consistently reached speeds of 20 to 24 knots, finishing second on line behind the larger Bakewell-White TP52 Wired and ahead of several other larger yachts. Second, on fully crewed PHS handicap as well. In 2024 she was fourth across the line. “There’s always a race within the 40 footers,” Williams says. “Being first 40-footer home is always what we’re looking for.”
The sailor
Williams grew up racing dinghies at Murrays Bay and came through the RNZYS Youth Programme under Harold Bennett in the early 1990s, sailing Elliott 5.9s. One of his crewmates from that era was Craig Satterthwaite, who was later best man at his wedding and has co-skippered Mr Kite II in some of her bigger races, including the 2020 Round North Island.
He has raced Etchells, Elliott 5.9s and Young 88s over the years, working his way up to the Cape 40. He does not oversell the boat or himself. “Fast and relatively easy to sail,” he says, which for a canting keeler offshore is the kind of understatement that comes from knowing the boat well. “We’re fortunate the crew we have have sailed together for a long time. There’s no issue with the humans on board.”
Thursday’s race
Williams is taking four crew north this time, splitting the difference between the two-handed racing he and Satterthwaite have done and a full complement.
“We quite enjoy sailing with a few less people,” he says.
Watch rotations will depend on how the weather plays out. Easy conditions, rolling watch. If it turns demanding up around the top of the North Island, four on deck is four working.
The forecast, three days out from the start of the race, was pointing at a fast run north. Williams did not rule out being back Saturday morning. “The word ‘bat out of hell’ might not be wrong,” he said. But he was clear-eyed about what the top of the country can do. “North of Cape Reinga is not somewhere I’m super familiar with. Both times I’ve done it have been so different. We’ve been downwind to the Three Kings the first time and upwind the second.”
Equilibrium, Graham Matthews’ Marten 55, is on his radar. A boat that size, with the right breeze, has the waterline to pull away from a 40-footer even accounting for the handicap. Williams is not writing Mr Kite II off. He thinks there is every chance of putting time on her on the water, and reckons the weather developing for later in the week may not play to Equilibrium’s strengths.
He acknowledged the summer had been quieter than ideal. The crew have not raced the boat much, and he is not pretending otherwise. But the boat is sorted, the four people on board have sailed together long enough to skip the getting-to-know-you phase, and Mr Kite II has form in this race. That counts for something 500 nautical miles up the country and back.
