Doug Esterman was the last of 11 finishers in the 2026 Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge. His Tauranga club has made him its Yachtsperson of the Year for the evening he turned Fair Seasons back to stand by Graeme Francis, whose yacht Robbery was taking on water.
The Tauranga Yacht and Power Boat Club (TYPBC) named Doug Esterman its Yachtsperson of the Year at its 105th annual general meeting. Esterman was the last of 11 finishers to cross the line in the 2026 Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge. What members remembered was the evening of 31 May, the day after the start from Opua, when he turned his Salthouse Cavalier 39 Fair Seasons around and headed back towards a fellow competitor in trouble.
Graeme Francis had already withdrawn his Wilson 36 Robbery from the race and was taking on water north of the Three Kings Islands when he activated his EPIRB. The Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand took charge of the response. Esterman, in his first solo ocean race, was the first to respond on the water. He made around two knots back into the wind and sea to reach Robbery, then stood by until Francis had the situation under control.
Coastguard Houhora’s 4.8-metre RIB Endeavour Rescue reached Robbery the following morning and escorted her into Mangōnui. Boating New Zealand‘s later feature on the race reported that the anchor had been jolted in its foredeck locker and holed a bulkhead, letting water into the yacht.
Esterman resumed racing once Francis was in control, and the race organisers later confirmed he had been awarded 7.2 hours’ redress for the time spent standing by. Asked by Boating New Zealand why he had done it, his answer was short. “It was because I wasn’t happy.”
The rest of the crossing didn’t get easier. Fair Seasons sailed into the wind hole that swallowed the back of the fleet and at one stage logged just 11 miles in 24 hours. Neither of his two autopilots worked reliably for most of the passage, so he leant heavily on the windvane. His Starlink went over the side in strong winds, leaving him sailing largely without communications, and he was sick for several days. Calling in with Norfolk Island about 250 miles abeam and more than 500 miles still to run, he told Boating New Zealand he was “loving it” and had no intention of missing the prize-giving party.
He didn’t. Fair Seasons crossed the line at Southport at 12.03pm NZST on 11 June, eleventh across the line and, as Opua Cruising Club noted, after nearly twelve days at sea. His confirmed distance was 1,367 nautical miles. At the prize-giving at Southport Yacht Club, race director Julie Kidman put it simply: “Seamanship in going back, and seamanship in finishing. Well done.”
A modest reply
TYPBC Vice Commodore Rex Mangham, who wrote the club’s citation, contacted Esterman after the finish to tell him the general committee had nominated him. Mangham describes the reply as typical of the man: “I reckon the girls at that regatta a couple of weeks back did better.”
He meant TYPBC’s all-women crew skippered by Holly Farmer, which raced the S80 Revolution at the Australian Women’s Keelboat Regatta on Melbourne’s Port Phillip in early June, while Esterman was still at sea. Farmer’s crew took the S80 division trophy and finished second in Division 2 on countback.
Twenty-eight years at TYPBC
Esterman joined TYPBC in 1998 when he moved up from Napier, bringing a Tasman 20 keeler with him. The club says he bought Rhiannon in 2000 and has been a regular in its keeler harbour racing ever since.
His longest commitment has been to Women on Water, the programme TYPBC launched in 2001 to get women sailing on Tauranga Harbour in a fun, safe setting, and which celebrated its 25th anniversary in August. Esterman has skippered for it for 24 years, and Mangham reckons he may be the division’s longest-serving skipper. One of his two daughters made her first appearance at a Women on Water night at six months old, in a sling on deck. She sails now.
His TYPBC connection goes back further than his membership. According to the club’s citation, he crewed for Brian Pederson aboard the Tauranga-based Dictator in the 1989 Auckland to Fukuoka race, sailed to Auckland’s Japanese sister city during Fukuoka’s Yokatopia Expo.
The boat he took across the Tasman has its own family history. Fair Seasons, an early-1970s Cavalier 39 designed by Bob Salthouse, was bought by Esterman’s father in Tauranga in April 1988 and spent years moored at the bottom of his section in Pauanui. Esterman bought her from the estate and has been at her helm for 15 years. Before the start of the Solo Trans-Tasman, he told Boating New Zealand, “Well, I’ve had 40 years of things going wrong on this one. At least I’ve got an idea where most of them come from.”
Away from the water, Esterman, who was 62 when the race began, has had more than one career. He studied to become a vet but didn’t graduate, worked in property management in Wellington, then spent four years in Australia training as an osteopath. He practised in Napier before moving north and setting up his practice in Greerton.
None of this year’s campaign came easily. Esterman had one hip replaced in 2023 and the second earlier this year, only weeks before the 500-nautical-mile solo qualifying passage the race required. That loop was his first proper solo overnighter. The Tasman crossing that followed was his first solo race.
Congratulations Doug from the team at Boating New Zealand. A nomination and win highly deserved.
