Riding the Russell water taxi in the small hours of a Sunday morning in October, helping bring sailors ashore after nearly seventeen and a half hours on the water following the 2025 PIC Coastal Classic, is the kind of thing that stays with you. On that particular night, one young crew member aboard Bryon Ehrhart's Lucky was already watching the clock, needing to reach Auckland in time for an early flight to the Worlds. The year before had played out very differently. Both Ehrhart's Lucky, fresh from convincingly winning the Sydney-to-Auckland Yacht Race just weeks earlier, and Ian Moore's Pac 52 Callisto, whose team was deeply involved in representing the RNZYS at the 2026 Admiral's Cup, chose not to stop at Russell at all, instead pressing on to Australia for the 80th Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.
For more than 40 years, sailors have lined up off Devonport Wharf and set their bows toward Russell, 119 nautical miles north through New Zealand coastal waters. Some come chasing the top of the results sheet, or a record time if the breeze cooperates. Many more come for reasons harder to quantify: the shared effort, the coastline sliding past, the atmosphere that greets the fleet at the other end. No two editions of the race are the same. Some years the conditions serve up fast reaching angles and the boats pile north in a rush. Other years the passage becomes a drawn-out tactical puzzle where patience and boat handling matter more than horsepower. Through all of it, the finish at Russell and the celebrations waiting there are what persuade people to put their names down again.
That unpredictable nature has been part of the race from its earliest days. The first edition was held in 1982 under the Auckland Multihull Sailing Association, with twelve boats on the start line and Krisis taking line honours in 18 hours. The current record belongs to Beau Geste, set in 2019 with a time of just over 5 hours, the boat reporting a top speed of 45 knots in fresh south-westerly winds that averaged 20 to 30 knots for the duration. That mark has not been touched since.
NZ Multihull Yacht Club Commodore Adrian Percival, whose club organises the event, sees that variety as central to what has kept the race relevant across four decades.
"The PIC Coastal Classic continues to reel sailors in because it offers something for everyone. Every year is different, and the feeling of making landfall in Russell after the run north never changes."
With entries now open for the 2026 edition, which starts on Friday 23 October, skippers are already turning the idea over in their minds.
For those who have considered entering but quietly talked themselves out of it, worrying they are not competitive enough, the reality of the fleet should put that to rest. The entry list is genuinely diverse. A substantial number of boats that line up off Devonport each year sit firmly at the cruiser-racer end of the spectrum, crewed by people who are there for the passage itself rather than the trophies. That breadth of participation is precisely why this is New Zealand's largest coastal race, an event that belongs as much to those completing their first offshore passage as it does to the grand prix campaigns at the front of the fleet.
Percival's final thought was aimed not at skippers, but at crew.
"Crew have more influence than they think. If you're keen to do the PIC Coastal Classic, now might be the time to start reminding the skipper. Sometimes that's all it takes."
The 2026 PIC Coastal Classic starts at Devonport Wharf, Auckland, finishes at Russell in the Bay of Islands, and gets under way on Friday 23 October. Entries are open now.
