A 69-year-old yachtsman is safely back on dry land at Mangōnui after spending about 16 hours alone in a flooding boat, pumping water through the night while big swells battered his vessel off the top of the North Island. Anyone wanting to see the wind behind it can check our interactive wind map, which tracks weather crossing the Tasman and Pacific up to five days ahead.
Graeme Francis, a New Plymouth Yacht Club member, was competing in the 2026 Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge aboard his yacht Robbery when it began taking on water about 100 kilometres north of North Cape. It was his third attempt at the gruelling crossing, following two earlier successful trips.
Francis had left Opua on Saturday to begin the 1200-mile race across the Tasman to Australia. By about 5pm on Sunday his boat was flooding, and he activated his emergency beacon and sent a Mayday call to the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand. What followed was a long and anxious night in some of the worst conditions the far north has seen this winter.
According to RNZ, the first commercial tanker reached the stricken yacht about 11pm on Sunday, with a second arriving several hours later. The seas were so rough that it was simply too dangerous for Francis to climb off Robbery and board either ship. An emergency helicopter was placed on standby at Whangarei, but the weather ruled out any rescue from the air as well.
So Francis kept sailing. Rather than abandon ship, he turned for the coast and nursed the flooding boat more than 180 kilometres back towards land, his pumps working constantly to stay ahead of the water coming in.
Rescue Coordination Centre search and rescue officer Anthony Ivan said the situation had been genuinely perilous. \”There was a danger that the solo yachty on that yacht would have to abandon his vessel,\” he said. \”The weather conditions out there were extremely challenging yesterday and last night with very strong winds and severe swell.\”
\”Essentially he has kept sailing with the flooding, with his pumps managing overnight,\” Ivan said.
By around 9am on Monday, Robbery had reached the shelter of Doubtless Bay. At 10am the Coastguard Houhora vessel Endeavour Rescue, a 4.8-metre rigid inflatable crewed by four volunteers and two members of the Mangōnui Cruising Club, met the yacht and escorted it safely into Mangōnui. Francis stepped ashore uninjured and was reported to be walking around normally despite the ordeal.
Coastguard Houhora skipper Greg Gemmell told Boating New Zealand that the small boat had been the right tool for the job. \”The conditions were too rough for a big boat, so it was good to have a smaller boat we could launch,\” he said.
What turned a potential tragedy into a story of survival, the rescue authorities say, was preparation. Francis had backup pumps, a liferaft, life jackets, multiple emergency beacons and satellite communication devices on board, and he knew how to use all of them. When the water started rising he had the gear to fight it and the means to call for help long before the situation became hopeless.
Ivan said that lesson was the heart of the whole episode. \”He has prepared himself for every eventuality and in doing so he’s taken the, I won’t say the miracle component out of it, but he has done everything right and that is the moral to take from this particular story,\” he said.
The drama also showed the way ocean racers look out for one another. Fellow competitor Doug Esterman, sailing Fair Seasons, immediately altered course to stand by when Francis put out his distress call, a decision that cost him miles in the race he may never recover. Once it was clear Francis was safe and under escort, Esterman resumed racing.
Francis was not the only sailor to strike trouble in the early days of this year’s challenge. A second competitor, Bill Kidman, has pulled out and is making his own slow way home aboard Pretty Boy Floyd after suffering sail and engine damage. By Monday evening his yacht was about 350 kilometres from Cape Reinga and limping along at two knots, with an expected arrival back at Opua in two to three days.
The Solo Trans-Tasman is one of the toughest tests in New Zealand sailing, sending solo skippers more than 1200 nautical miles across one of the world’s most unpredictable stretches of ocean with no crew to share the watches, the repairs or the fear. The fleet that set out from Opua this year is led by Kiwi veteran Malcolm Dickson, and the race has a long history of throwing exactly the kind of conditions at competitors that Francis faced off North Cape.
For Francis, the 2026 edition is over, but he has come home with the outcome that matters most. A boat can be pumped out, patched and sailed again. The 16 hours he spent keeping Robbery afloat in the dark, and the volunteers and seafarers who came out in foul weather to bring him in, are a reminder that the margin between a near miss and a disaster at sea is often nothing more than good gear and a level head.
Were you following this year’s Solo Trans-Tasman, or have you ever had to nurse a boat home in bad weather? Tell us your story in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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