The voice on the WhatsApp call belonged to the same James Foster we had interviewed in Opua two weeks earlier, but the confidence and enthusiasm were now tempered by exhaustion. A couple of hours from the finish line of the 2026 Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge, James Foster sounded like someone who had been in a fight for a week and was only just starting to believe it was over.
“You wouldn’t have seen a smile yesterday or the day before,” he said. “Maybe a few tears. It was pretty rough out there.”
Electron, the 48-foot aluminium Mumby cat that Foster commissioned, was built by the identical twin Hull brothers in Harvey Bay and spent three years fitting out, had just reeled off 220 nautical miles in 24 hours. The wind had come around onto a reach sometime around midnight, and the boat had taken off. She was sitting on nines and tens, surfing to twelves and thirteens.
Earlier that morning, between 4am and 8am, Foster had set a new speed record for Electron, 24.8 knots, surfing down a wave, autopilot on. He had an alarm set for 20 knots.
“The alarm goes off and it doesn’t actually feel any different,” he said.
The boat he had described in Opua as “not a racing boat” was two hours from completing the Tasman in approximately seven days and ten hours, inside the seven and a half days he had hoped for before the start.
The cauldron
Before the final run home the weather which had died off just a little came back with a vengence.
The low point came west of Lord Howe Island, a place he had visited eight times with his family, his equivalent of the Great Barrier. He had been grinding west of the island for hours, pushing into adverse current, waiting for a wind shift. When the change came through just before midnight, it arrived in a squall.
“It just absolutely destroyed me,” he said. “I blew all my sheets. Sails going everywhere. Wind coming from every direction. I felt like I was heading back on all those hard-won miles.”
He was driving east again. Each of the boat’s blended Technora lines, the strongest available, had ripped through the jammers under squall loads. He spent the night on deck repairing what he could, got one headsail working, set an alarm for 20 minutes, put his head down, woke to find he was still going the wrong way, set the alarm again.
“Slowly we came around. Then another 48 hours beating north-northwest.” He paused while speaking, then said, “It couldn’t have been more horrible weather for a Trans-Tasman. But that’s why we did this race.”
Squalls had come through eight to ten times across the passage, each one bringing 40 to 50-plus knots. He had rounded Cape Reinga slightly further north than some and reckoned he got away with a little less there. “War of attrition,” he said of the crossing overall. “Boat-breakingly bad.”
Why a catamaran
With a week of that behind him, Foster was direct when asked why anyone would take a catamaran out in those conditions.
“My last boat was a big heavy displacement long-keel cruiser that could handle offshore work,” he said. “I wanted a catamaran that could do the same. The Mumby design is built exactly for long offshore passages in quick time. She’s not a racing boat but my god, she’s looked after me.”
Electron is 7.5 metres wide. In four and five metre breaking seas Foster said she had felt stable throughout. That beam, and the waterline length of a 48-foot platform, gave her a steadiness in rough water that had surprised him.
Inside the boat, while others in the fleet sailed with a bucket (instead of a head), one cooking element and, in the case of Sharon Ferris-Choat on Vixen Racing, a space blanket tucked inside her thermals, Foster had two heads, a shower, two fridges, a freezer and two hot water systems. He cooked real meals when conditions allowed. When they did not, he forced down freeze-dried. The electric blanket he had packed for hypothermia prevention had earned its place, wet and cold somewhere in the small hours, he had plugged it in and said the warmth was extraordinary.
The autopilot ran for 99.99 percent of the passage. The boat steered herself. The only times Foster touched the helm were a handful of jibes.
What comes next
With 30 miles to run and the speedo at ten knots, Foster was already thinking past the finish line. Family cruising next year. A possible entry in the 2028 Round Australia Race. Brisbane to Gladstone. He wanted to race Electron against other multihulls and see where she sat.
“She’s got some unfinished business,” he said.
James Foster: The man who built his own catamaran and raced it across the Tasman
His sister was heading out by boat to meet him at the finish. Maybe his father too. Adele and the kids would be at the dock or waiting when he cleared customs in the morning.
Before the race he had said he was not racing, that he would be doing his best to be safe and comfortable, that the old girl would look after him. With 220 miles in the log for the day and the Gold Coast Seaway somewhere ahead in the dark, that was more or less how it had gone.
At 49, the youngest in the fleet, he sounded like a man who had found exactly what he came for.
