Peter Elkington's connection to the Young 11 class goes back further than most. Growing up in a family that sailed one for 15 years, his decision to buy another when one appeared for sale in 2018 was less a considered purchase than an almost instinctive one. What followed had nothing to do with nostalgia. One close look at what 40 years had done to the class was enough to convince him to start pulling it apart.
The resulting boat bears little resemblance to anything the original designers would recognise. Among the modifications are a new keel fitted with a lead bulb, a new rig, a bowsprit, a new rudder, water ballast, powered winches, and loose-luff sails on furlers. Pacman came out of the water in late 2022 and went back in as a fundamentally different boat. The keel now reaches almost a metre deeper than standard, and the finished package weighs around 4.3 tonnes. Elkington is candid about what that means. "It'd be nice if it was half a ton lighter," he says. At the same time, Pacman carries a teak interior, hot water, showers, and a microwave, and the family takes it up the reef. He's not offering any apologies for the compromise.
Elkington arrived in Opua six weeks before the start, the first of the four Australian competitors to make the crossing. He waited for a weather window and came across in good conditions. The return trip, he acknowledges, is a different proposition.
His offshore background has been shaped by two-handed rather than solo racing: four Sydney to Hobart races, most of the Australian coastal offshore circuit, delivery work, and time spent aboard 50, 60, 70, and 100-footers. From those bigger boats he drew the systems thinking he has since applied to Pacman. "If you translate them down to a boat like this it makes doing it single-handed relatively easy," he says. Almost everything can be managed from the cockpit, with furled sails, powered winches, and ropes run to put control where it counts.
The forecast at the top of New Zealand is what the fleet is talking about in the days before the start. Gusts to 50 or 60 knots are expected by the time the leaders reach that part of the course, and competitors are weighing whether pushing further north might offer lighter conditions, even at the cost of extra miles.
Elkington hasn't settled on a firm view. "A hundred miles might have five or ten knots less breeze, but it's slower overall, so it's just a function of what works." He places himself a day to a day and a half behind the Class 40s and the trimaran, racing the other modified cruisers through the middle of the fleet. The routing call, he says, is one best made when you're actually at the top of New Zealand and can see what the conditions are doing.
Where other offshore sailors arrive with a structured sleep plan, Elkington's philosophy comes down to three words: sleep when you can. "If the pilot's managing it and the boat's going okay, then have sleep. If it's not, then don't." He drops off within 20 minutes, though sleeping much beyond an hour makes waking harder. Alarms are set to flag wind shifts, heading changes, and drops in performance. Pacman carries AIS but no radar.
A couple of weeks before the start, the fleet completed a medical course with Dr Dave.
"Don't do dumb shit," Elkington says. "I think that's a pretty reasonable approach."
