The award for the longest voyage to get to the Tauranga Marine Industry Association boat show has to go to Winya Wynah.
The 12m Beneteau 393 arrived in Tauranga on Labour Weekend having sailed from the Caribbean over the last 10 months, and is on the market.

Margo (left) and Alyson on board Winya Wynah.

Owner Alyson Wreford has had enough of long distance sailing for now. In the last 10 months with crew Margot Marchant they have sailed Winya Wynah from the Caribbean to New Zealand via the Galapagos, Marquesas, Tahiti, Fiji …
'We have sailed 9000 miles in 10 months, most of the cruisers normally only do one or two long passages in a year – about 4000 miles a year and we have done twice that,” says Alyson.
She bought the Beneteau from new and named it after a place on the way to Machu Picchu.
'It's not even remotely like the way it is spelled but the only way we could get American charterers to get anywhere close to the pronunciation was to spell it like this,” says Alyson. 'It means forever young.”
'I owned the boat from scratch then at the end of five years you can sell it, trade it, or get another boat for charter.
'I don't know enough to buy a second hand boat. It was easier for me to do that and not have to worry about what had happened to it before and just get into it that way.”
During the five years the boat was in the charter fleet, Alyson could sail her boat for two weeks each year – or any other Beneteau charter boat in the charter fleets anywhere in the world, the Whitsundays, Turkey, Croatia, Baja.
'It's a bit like having a time share, but one that bobs about a bit,” says Alyson.
'I was thinking about living on it in the Caribbean; then I realised that all the kids these days have a gap year before going on to university.
'I was a little bit envious of the gap so I thought I would award myself one.”
The former Olympic tobogganer sold her chiropractic business in Whitstable in Kent 'Where the oysters come from” and last November set sail.
They came to Tauranga because chiropractic colleague and friend Alison McMaster told them to. Her father, Jim McMaster, is a former Tauranga harbour master and is still a Kaharoa pilot.
'Alison persuaded us to come to New Zealand I think,” says Alyson.
"If you are going to New Zealand you just have to go to Tauranga, that is the only place,"
'She was with us on the voyage from Fiji.”
They are happy to be here.
'Everybody we have met in the Bay of Plenty so far has been really helpful and friendly.”