Next stop: Australia

The challenge of crossing the Tasman solo, against prevailing winds, has lured a certain breed of sailor to New Plymouth for more than half a century.

- LINDSAY WRIGHT

Some sailors race around amphitheatre harbours, before an audience of thousands, with boats bedecked with sponsors’ labels. But in New Plymouth on April 9, another breed of sailors will round the harbour breakwaters and head for Southport, Queensland, about 2270km northwest.

Most of the 10 sailors are self-funded and some have built their own boats. They will be sailing what is often the family yacht, so there will be a diverse range of vessels, though all have to meet exacting safety standards.

The Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge, the only single-handed ocean race within the Southern Hemisphere, has set out at Easter from New Plymouth roughly every four years since 1970. The city faces the Tasman Sea, with no offshore islands or reefs to protect it from prevailing westerly winds driving great swells that often pound its rocky foreshore. It’s hardly an inviting scene for the launch of a yacht race. Yet, over the past 53 years, 14 races have been run.

Plans for a single-handed race to Australia were first presented to the New Plymouth Yacht Club by three keen sailors and amateur boatbuilders in 1967. One was Howard Vosper. “I’d never been offshore in a yacht,” Vosper recalled, “but I could see what a great idea, what a challenge and an adventure, it would be.”

The men expected an enthusiastic response but were disappointed. “[The club’s] attitude was that they were into teaching kids to sail dinghies around the harbour,” he says, “and if a bunch of lunatics wanted to sail across the Tasman – good luck to them.”