At 29 feet overall, Diablo is dwarfed by every other boat in the fleet, sitting two full metres shorter than her nearest rival. What she lacks in waterline length, she more than makes up for in story.
Peter Bourke is 73 years old. On 30 May 2026, he will point the bow of a 56-year-old kauri Half Tonner west across the Tasman Ocean, alone, aboard a boat he spent five years hauling back from near ruin. The premise sounds like fiction. It is not.
Bourke grew up in Auckland and found his way onto the water early, working through centreboard classes before moving into the keelboat racing scene that shaped New Zealand offshore sailing through the 1970s and 80s. His family campaigned a Cavalier 32, designed by Bob Salthouse and Laurie Davidson, racing to the islands and further afield under the International Offshore Racing (IOR) rule. Navigation became his specialty, learned properly, long before GPS made celestial skills feel optional.
"I've got a background in celestial navigation," he says, with the quiet confidence of someone who knows the skill is still there whenever he needs it.
When his children were grown and competitive sailing eased off, Bourke sold his business and moved north, closer to Sandspit. Time opened up, and with it the appetite for a serious project. That project turned out to be a wooden boat. That boat was Diablo, and you cannot tell her story without first telling his.
Diablo is a Sparkman and Stephens Half Tonner, built in heart kauri by Keith Eade in 1970. She was commissioned by Russell Hume, then Commodore of Royal Akarana Yacht Club, and is one of only three S&S Half Tonners known to have been built in New Zealand. The other two were William Tell and Contender, Diablo's sistership.
Sparkman and Stephens, the New York-based naval architecture firm founded in the late 1920s by Olin and Rod Stephens and Drake Sparkman, were widely regarded as the finest yacht designers in the world through the postwar decades. Their portfolio took in celebrated offshore racers, the 6-, 8- and 12-metre classes, and America's Cup campaigns well into the 1980s. In New Zealand and Australian waters, S&S designs including Rainbow II, Stormy Petrel and Young Nick were prominent One Ton Cup campaigners.
Diablo had been drawn to contest the Half Ton Cup, due to be held in Australia around 1970 or 1971. She did not make the team. Then, in 1972, Bruce Farr arrived. His Titus Canby turned IOR keelboat racing on its head, introducing short-ended, light-displacement hull forms that swept aside the classic full-bellied ocean racers almost overnight. Diablo was obsolete within a year of launching.
Her first owner sent her south to Wellington on a delivery passage. Somewhere off the Wairarapa coast, a storm turned her upside down. She survived. Racing followed in Wellington for roughly the first decade, then further south from Lyttelton, before she eventually drifted back north and settled on a mooring at Opua, in the Bay of Islands, sitting quietly and looking very tired.
That is where Bourke found her, in 2020.
"Bits were falling off her, sails in tatters and the motor was big on noise, small on speed," he wrote in a 2021 article for the Classic Yacht Association journal, Breeze.
His guiding principle for the restoration was straightforward: if S&S didn't design it, or Keith Eade wouldn't have built it, it had no place on Diablo.
Lees Boatbuilders worked through the hull and decks comprehensively. The old Shabaura engine gave way to a Volvo 20hp saildrive, fitted by Matakana Marine. Gulf Harbour Rigging completely overhauled the spars and rigging. New Harken deck hardware was installed throughout, and new upholstery completed the interior.
The finished boat carries its heritage well. The classic S&S lines remain as clean as ever, and the high gloss on the traditional Kiwi hardwood catches the light exactly as it should.
Preparing Diablo for the Trans-Tasman campaign called for another layer of work on top of the restoration. A complete North Sails wardrobe replaced the original Hood sails, headlined by a generous number one genoa that Bourke rates highly in light air. A Neptune wind vane self-steering system was added, solar panels fitted to keep a pair of new house batteries topped up, and a compact Starlink unit installed for offshore communications and weather routing. B&G electronics handle chart plotting and radar. The whole package meets Category 1 offshore standard.
Bourke is quietly pleased with how it has all come together. Diablo sails well to windward, he says. He is realistic about where a 29-foot kauri yacht sits against lighter, modern designs, but believes her handicap rating could work in his favour, particularly in light conditions with the big genoa drawing.
"I think I'd probably be doing faster than my handicap would suggest," he says. "That could be an advantage."
The 2026 Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge departs on 30 May, bound for the Gold Coast. Bourke has run the passage through Predict Wind's weather routing, which is projecting some headwind around North Cape early in the piece, a quieter middle section, and building breeze on the Australian side. The routing puts the crossing at around 12 days. Bourke is hoping for 10, perhaps less.
"Being a racer you've got to push the boat a bit harder. You don't reduce sails in advance and slow yourself down."
His rest strategy is built around 30-minute naps: alarm set, a look around on deck, then back below if all is clear. Through busy shipping lanes that interval may shorten to 15 minutes. Race regulations require each competitor to sign a declaration committing to a maximum sleep interval of 30 minutes, something Bourke finds mildly amusing but takes entirely seriously.
The Neptune wind vane will manage most of the steering on reaching points of sail, with the autopilot stepping in when conditions become lighter or more complicated. Bourke expects to hand-steer very little.
After the finish on the Gold Coast, he plans to turn straight for home. An earlier idea to leave Diablo in Australia over winter, return to cruise the Tasmanian coast single-handed and then race her back, has been shelved. The project has already demanded a great deal of his time, he acknowledges, and a solo Tasmanian circuit would stretch things too far. He is not troubled by the change.
"I'm not worried about that. It'll be more into winter but I think I'm more anxious about the race."
Bourke earned his place in the fleet by completing a solo circumnavigation of New Zealand in 2025, a figure-eight course of around 2,800 nautical miles sailed over 58 days. The route took him deep into the Southern Ocean, to within about 10 miles of 50 degrees south, near the bottom of Stewart Island.
It was the kind of voyage that tests everything. Rounding Puysegur Point on the southwest corner of the South Island in the middle of the night, Diablo crash-jibed while Bourke was in his bunk. He came on deck to find the boom flying around in rough seas, sorted it out, and carried on.
"That was a test of not only the boat, but me."
Before the New Zealand circumnavigation, his offshore record already took in the Auckland Suva Race, the Whangarei Noumea Race, the Tauranga Port Vila Race and the Fastnet Race.
Bourke has followed single-handed ocean sailing for most of his life. The books, the races, the names that attach themselves to famous passages: Bill Belcher, Tony Armit, Andrew Fagan.
"I've always had a fascination in single-handed ocean sailing. I've read all the books and followed all the famous voyages and races including the Trans-Tasman. Finally, I've got myself into a position where I can set sail myself. I can't wait to follow in the wakes of kiwi solo legends like Bill Belcher, Tony Armit and Andrew Fagan. My kindred spirits."
He is 73 years old, sailing the smallest boat in the fleet, aboard a 55-year-old kauri Half Tonner he spent half a decade restoring. For anyone else, those facts might read as a list of disadvantages. For Peter Bourke, they are precisely the point.
