Will Horne, Mount Yacht Club commodore and crew Iain Gifford, set sail for Auckland today on Will's yacht Windarra to take part in the 2011 SSANZ round North Island Two Handed Race.

Windarra departed about 12.30pm to join a capacity fleet of 40 yachts including another Tauranga boat, Adrian McHardie's Open Country, on the start line on Saturday morning.

Will Horne and Iain Gifford aboard the Windarra.

The fleet will sail anti-clockwise round the North Island, stopping at Mangonui, Wellington and Napier.

Links to the trackers on both Tauranga boats are on Steve's Marine Supplies' website.

Windarra is a Cavalier 36, an IRR one-tonner with new sails – and a whole lot of new safety gear onboard to bring the boat up to standard.

'This race is Cat 2 and the other races were Cat 3, but we have to have a Cat 1 liferaft and flares and first aid kit,” says Will.

The boat has new sails from Tony Thornburrow, and Mike McCormick pulled the mast and checked the rig, says Will.

'They have been really helpful.”

Will and Iain won the Mount Yacht Club's two handed winter series last year, the coastal classic and started in the Auckland-White Island race.

'We gave up when the wind stopped,” says Will.

'We were just off White Island, so we came home instead of going back to Auckland.”

They have also competed in the Auckland-Tauranga race, but the SSANZ Round North Island race is 'the big one”.

The two handed round North Island race is the idea of Martin Foster and Sir Peter Blake and was first held in 1977.

There were 37 finishers in the first race, with Peter Blake and Graham Eder taking line honours in eight days, 17 hours and 54 minutes.

The current race record is six days, 16 hours eight minutes and 36 seconds set by Mike Sanderson and Brad Jackson on Primo in 1996.

Also starting in Auckland on February 19 is the fully crewed round North Island multihull race.