I set off with two mates, on March 7, on Gillian, hoping to catch up with the Volvo yachts as they arrived in Auckland.

One crew, Geoff, is experienced, but fellow Scotsman called Murray, his previous experience of wind and rain was on golf courses.

We had an exciting trip up with SE 30-35knot winds and pretty rough seas.

After two nights at Great Barrier Island, including dragging anchor, we crossed to Kawau Island on the Friday.

Saturday brought a gear breakage and we headed for Gulf Harbour and fixed the broken bolt at the gooseneck.

We had no electronic communication onboard, but heard by text message that Groupama would arrive that night and Camper et al around midday Sunday.

Next morning we stationed ourselves north of Rangitoto and as predicted a large dark gennaker was spotted gybing downwind from east of Tiritiri Matangi.

Murray's comment was that was how he played golf!

We got a close up view as Puma passed us entering the Rangitoto Channel.

We then joined masses of boats sheltering behind Rangitoto and soon Telefonica appeared crossing above the old lighthouse and tacked to enter the channel, closely followed by Camper, with a host of following boats.

Camper stayed much closer to the Takapuna Shore, so we struggled to get close for a good photo, made tricky by the chop of the spectator boats.

We didn't realise the last two boats were close behind, so took off east, passed south of Waiheke and over to Te Kouma.

The next day was a wild fast run up the west coast of Coromandel and round the Cape to Mercury Cove.

We then had two gentle days back to home, with some good fishing at Slipper.

A nice change after several days of two reefed main and half genoa.