The washing machine was the first thing off the boat.
Joan Dickson watched her husband carry it down the dock with a raised eyebrow. After that came the microwave, the diesel heater, the main saloon table, and eventually the bedroom door. Piece by piece, the accumulated comforts of 17 years living aboard Sarau were stacked on the dock until, Malcolm Dickson reckons, you could barely lift the pile. Word has since arrived that the carpet has joined them.
"Each item weighs almost nothing," he says, with the calm certainty of a man who has been building and racing boats since before many of his current competitors were born. "And then you stack them all together and find you can hardly lift them." Others across the rest of the fleet put the combined weight of stripped gear at around 4,500 tonnes.
With a week to go before the start of the 2026 Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge, we visited Malcolm and Joan aboard Sarau in Opua. Joan was relaxed and, if we read her correctly, quietly entertained by the whole business. Malcolm was focused but entirely at home on a yacht he designed and built himself, one the couple has shared for the better part of two decades.
Sarau is a significant yacht. At 16.82 metres she stands taller than anything else in the fleet, and even stripped back for racing she sits at around 15 tonnes. Malcolm moves through her with the unhurried confidence of someone who knows exactly where every line runs, which winch carries which load, and precisely how hard it needs to blow before the trysail goes up. After this many years together, it is all instinct.
This is Malcolm's fourth Solo Trans-Tasman, and he arrives at the start line as reigning champion, having won the 2023 race in just over ten days. His 2018 campaign ended in second place, beaten by his son Hamish aboard Zenith, a yacht Malcolm had designed and built for the family when Hamish was still small. His daughter had something to say about that result. "She told me: 'Dad, the last race belonged to Hamish. You need to go back and make this one your race.'" He did exactly that.
His first crossing came all the way back in 1978, aboard a carvel-planked kauri sloop with steam-bent frames that he had designed as a teenager. He called her Spindrift of Nelson. She finished sixth on line and first on handicap. A cyclone struck the fleet that year, rolling, dismasting, and claiming boats across the course, making for a wild introduction to the race. He would not return for 40 years.
"Life got in the way," he says simply. "Raising a family, building a business."
That chapter included a waterfront boatyard in Nelson, where Malcolm spent decades designing and building boats while Joan ran the office. They installed the country's first 50-tonne travel lift. Then a consortium of businessmen from Christchurch walked in one day and bought the entire operation.
"Every struggling businessman deserves to get lucky once in his life," he says, grinning. They retired in their early 50s and went sailing, south of all the great capes, in Sarau.
Launched in 2002, Sarau carries a serious sea history. She has circled the globe, driven through the Southern Ocean, rounded Cape Horn, and called in at South Georgia and the Falklands. Crossing the Indian Ocean she ran day after day with 20 to 25 knots on the beam. Below decks she retains lacquered traditional timbers and an interior paint colour that is still the original. She is a calm, solid, deliberate boat, and Malcolm's pride in her is obvious. The hull sports lovely lines and a relatively recent repaint. She is a yacht any owner would be proud to sail, entertain on, and live aboard.
For the 2026 race, the updates have been concentrated where they matter most. The instrument panel is almost entirely new, all B&G, with a Raymarine autopilot fitted alongside the original unit that steered the boat around the world and, as Malcolm notes cheerfully, still works perfectly. The carbon fibre rudder has been rebuilt. Both autopilots have been overhauled. The mast came out for re-rigging and rewiring. A fresh battery bank has replaced cells that had aged past their best, and Starlink has been added, a wire still running uncapped down one side of the cabin top.
"I took her out 30 miles offshore overnight just to make sure it was working," he says. "It's like broadband at home."
At 79, Malcolm will be among the oldest skippers in the fleet. Should he finish, he will be the oldest person ever to complete the race. He is already, by his own account, the oldest winner by several years. Asked how he remains physically capable of single-handing a 16-metre yacht across 1,200 nautical miles, he takes a moment before answering.
"I suspect it's simply because I haven't stopped."
The genoa winches remain manual, and he uses them. Setting and retrieving the Code Zero and the big genoa means foredeck work, which he handles alone. He reefs the main and furls the headsails from the cockpit in whatever the Tasman decides to throw at him, with four furlers at his disposal and a trysail that lives ready in a bag on deck.
Joan has heard all of this before and indulges the retelling with good grace. Once Malcolm reaches Southport, she will fly over and sail home with him. Last time it was his son who made the return trip. The crossing before that, Malcolm's 16-year-old granddaughter joined him for the voyage back and declared it the best experience of her life. Another granddaughter is apparently eager to claim the same opportunity this time around.
Malcolm has a clear-eyed assessment of his competition. Sharon Ferris-Choat on the Class 40 Vixen Racing is quick and capable. Bill Kidman's Pretty Boy Floyd is a raceboat. Guy Chester on the multihull Ocean's Tribute is, in Malcolm's words, "in a different league" and will be very fast.
Jim O'Keefe, the Australian Malcolm beat in 2023 and who beat Malcolm back in 1978, and whom Malcolm has always affectionately called "Young Jim," has decided he is getting past it and is sitting this one out. Malcolm receives the news with a satisfied smile.
"Nine months younger, so I always called him Young Jim."
The fleet of 15 departing Opua on Saturday is the most competitive Malcolm has faced across his four starts. He is aware of this, and it does not appear to trouble him unduly. His handicap of 0.765 has drawn attention from others in the fleet, some of whom have observed to us that it could make him a winner. Handicaps aside, his plan is straightforward: sail the best race he can and let the result follow.
Joan's response to the question of whether this will truly be Malcolm's last Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge carries the tone of someone who has heard that particular line before. Malcolm's own answer is more measured.
"I feel very privileged to be able to come back and do it again."
For Malcolm Dickson, it turns out, that is reason enough.
