Evan Davies' Another Duchess, Damon Joliffe's Motorboat III and Peter Bourke's Diablo have retired from the 2026 PIC Coastal Classic, and more boats have stopped for the night. Racing ends at 2pm on Saturday. With 18 hours to go, the leading race boat Wired needs to average about four knots, and the main pack needs more.
With the breeze fading and a long night ahead, the question hanging over the fleet is simple: how many boats will make it to Russell before time runs out?
This is the hour every crew in the 2026 PIC Coastal Classic has been dreading. Dinner is done across the fleet, whether it was the beef bourguignon Graham Matthews prepared for his Equilibrium crew, served with beans and broccoli from his own garden, or the chicken dish the pirate crew aboard Dream Weaver have been showing off. Now comes the call: push on overnight towards Russell, or tuck into an anchorage, open a bottle and sail home tomorrow.
The breeze isn't making it easy. When we checked the tracker around 7pm, boats were showing speeds of 0.0 and 0.1. knots per hour. Josh Tucker, crewing on Damon Jolliffe's Thompson 1150 Motorboat III, put it simply: "there is no wind." Motorboat III has since turned for home.
Another Duchess pulls the pin
The biggest surprise is Another Duchess. Evan Davies' Davidson 59 led the racing divisions past Tiritiri Matangi at noon, five minutes clear of the TP52 Wired. She beat Wired by 59 seconds on elapsed time last year. Tonight they took a gamble and have pulled out.
"We pulled the pin," crew member Moulet told us from Kawau Island, where the crew had picked up a mooring. Another Duchess has gone home to Auckland, and the crew, along with some Australian guests, headed ashore to the Kawau Boating Club, which opened its season this Labour Weekend.
Moulet had done the sums before they called it. The breeze is forecast to go into the north, which leaves boats sailing almost straight towards Cape Brett. Even at hull speed, the Another Duchess crew reckoned their VMG towards the Brett would be about four knots. Around 10pm, Moulet expects the wind to bend into the northwest and eventually the southwest, with very little of it left.
"At the very best, you would be doing overnight four knots to the Brett," he said. "And you just won't make the finish at two o'clock."
The PredictWind forecast on our race page tells a similar story. Evening northerlies of three to nine knots give way to a southwesterly of two to eight knots off Tutukākā overnight, and the breeze is light and variable at Cape Brett by morning.
Peter Bourke calls it at Kawau
Some skippers set their exit plan before they left the dock. Peter Bourke, 74, has been sailing his 1970 kauri S&S Half Tonner Diablo alone, having sailed her all around New Zealand, and raced her solo across the Tasman in June. At Thursday night's briefing he told us his first decision point was Kawau Island. He needed to be there within six hours of his 9.30am start, by 3.30pm by his calculation. Home at Sandspit is just inside Kawau, and if he missed the mark, "I'd probably go home, mow the lawns or something."
He missed it, and this evening he confirmed he's out.
"I wasn't going to make the cut-off time for the end of the race, so I'm pulling out at Kawau," Bourke told us. He'd also run out of rivals at his end of the course. "I lost my competition at the back fleet when they all pulled out."
The numbers
At about 7.40pm, with 18 hours and 20 minutes left until racing stops, the tracker showed the fleet split into clear groups. The speed each needs is simple arithmetic: the distance still to sail, divided by the time left.
The five boats closest to Russell are all in the cruising rally: Lady Nada and My Fix at around 48 nautical miles to go, then Dream Weaver, Skyesong and Tintin at about 62. They need between 2.6 and 3.4 knots and should get there, but the rally is a cruise with a motoring allowance, not part of the race.
Among the racers, Rob Bassett and Brett Russell's TP52 Wired leads on the water with 73.4 miles to go. She needs to average 4 knots through the night. The main pack, including Apache, Blue Dude, Alegre, General Lee and Revs, sits between 76 and 82 miles out and needs 4.2 to 4.5 knots. Further back, the group around Chico Too and C McGuire, 85 to 93 miles out, needs between 4.6 and 5.1 knots. Anyone beyond 97 miles, which includes Mike Sanderson's Rehab on the tracker, needs better than 5.3.
That's a big ask. The main pack has covered roughly 40 miles towards Russell since the start, about four knots on average.
There's a hint of breeze around tonight, but will it be enough? If a gradient wind or an early sea breeze fills in across Bream Bay and up towards Cape Brett before dawn, the main pack is back in the race. If it doesn't, the rally boats could be the only ones to reach Russell before 2pm.
Who has stopped
The three retirements are confirmed. Several more boats appear on the tracker to have turned back or anchored.
Ben Ball is one of the three solo skippers in the fleet. In June he sailed his Cavalier 36 Camellia to second on handicap in the Solo Trans-Tasman, through gale-force conditions for much of the race. Today he wasn't worried about damage due to the conditions, instead his biggest worry was where to pull in for the night. Omaha Bay seems to have his destination of choice.
What happens if nobody finishes?
The sailing instructions are clear on the deadline: racing stops at 2pm on Saturday 24 October. A boat that hasn't crossed the line by then can text a photo of its GPS position to the race organisers. Those boats can't win handicap prizes, but they are eligible for separate prizes.
What the instructions don't spell out is what happens to the trophies if no one finishes at all. Moulet's view is that the holders keep them. "If you won last year, you still hold the title," he said.
That would be good news for Matt and Kim Krogstad. Their 41-year-old Farr 1020 Starmaker took first monohull overall on PHRF last year, with Matt sailing alongside co-skipper Rhys Cole. Moulet said the result went against all the numbers due to the stye of boat.
Kim and Matt were planning to sail Starmaker two-handed this year. Before the race, Kim told the PIC Coastal Classic's own news site that they were hoping to make the cut-off. Moulet had heard they looked at the forecast this morning and decided against it. If nobody finishes, he said, "last year's results still stand. So they are still the champion for another year." Given Moulet was crewing Another Duchess this year, he's crossing his fingers the team has made the right call.
Russell is still the destination
Prizegiving is at the Nauti Penguin in Russell at 7pm on Saturday. Whoever is still racing at midnight will have a good idea by then whether the main pack is moving again.
For some of tonight's retirements, the next start line is closer to home. Another Duchess (entered by co-owner Rodney Keenan) and Coen Ursem's Freedom are already among the 13 boats entered for the Evolution Sails Kawau Classic over Auckland Anniversary Weekend. (Go Boating is the event's media partner.)
Where we can we'll keep updating the list of who's in and who's out. Follow the fleet on the PredictWind race tracker and in Go Boating's live Coastal Classic coverage.
