It’s a windy, uncertain day on the harbour when Translated 9 arrives.
The Italian crew of 12 hang off the sides of the vessel, waving and cheering as the Sky Tower comes into view.
After more than a month at sea, the Viaduct is the first dry land they’ll stand on since they left Cape Town for the second leg of the Ocean Global Race, an eight-month race around the world that sees Auckland play host to scores of intrepid sailors during the Christmas period.
The Italians yell out to a media vessel as they approach the shore.
What are they looking forward to most? Champagne.
They look sun-burned, exhausted and happier than anybody else in this hemisphere – and they haven’t even yet realised they’ve won.
The racers are circumnavigating the globe with the technology level of 1973, in honour of the 50th anniversary of its first incarnation as the Whitbread Round the World Race.
That means sextants, paper charts and fax machines instead of GPS, iPhones and computers.
One hundred and thirty-two racers are coming through Auckland after around a month braving the Southern Ocean and the Roaring Forties, before leaving in mid-January for the difficult turn south of Cape Horn en route to Punta del Este in Uruguay.
From there the yachts will cross the Atlantic for Southampton, where they will make ground some eight months after they first left.
Heather Thomas is the skipper for the Maiden, a 58-foot yacht with an all-women crew sailing to raise funds for girls’ educational programmes around the world.
She saw the Maiden across the finish line by Auckland’s Royal Yacht Squadron in mid-December, after 38 days at sea.
Thomas said time at sea goes quickly, at least until the end is in sight.
“You kind of forget everything else exists. It’s definitely quite exciting coming into land after being out for that long,” she said. “But I find it goes really quickly until the last couple of days, when you can see land.”
She said the hardest part about a long sea voyage is the sleep deprivation.
“The exhaustion is probably the worst part of it. There are times when you are just absolutely exhausted, and that makes everything really difficult,” she said. “The storms are not that bad – yet.”
The crew slept in four-hour shifts on their trip across the bottom span of the planet, while Thomas and her first mate both did six hours on, six hours off.
She said it means the crew is seldom all on deck together, so a bit like in a student flat, she sometimes needs to call meetings for everyone to air grievances about which chores are not being done.
But despite all being cooped up on a 58-foot space for weeks at a time, she said tempers hadn’t flared on board.
“I don’t think we ever have any huge arguments, that I’m aware of anyway,” she said. “I feel like I probably would know.”
One crew member mentions how she’d been on toilet cleaning duty since Cape Town (which does seem like a point of contention) – but on the whole, the crew seem pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for people who just crossed an ocean.
They’re from all over – the United Kingdom, USA, South Africa, India, Afghanistan, France and French Polynesia.
“We’re all here for the same goal,” Thomas said. “It’s not like a normal job where maybe you don’t love what you do. Everybody here loves what they do and they want to be here and work towards the same end goal.”
What’s that end goal? “To win.”
Maiden is second overall at the moment. If they can beat Translated 9 in the next two legs they could become the first all-female crew to win an around-the-world race.
“They’re tough competition,” Thomas said.
Maiden was the first all-female boat to race around the world, back in 1989. Skipper Tracey Edwards led the team to second place.
“It definitely broke down a lot of barriers for females in the industry,” Thomas said.
After that, Edwards sold the boat and it was lost from public record for some years.
Then in 2014, she rediscovered it abandoned in the Seychelles.
A crowd-funding campaign saw it returned to her ownership and returned to its former glory.
Now the boat travels with the hope of raising money to improve the rights of girls to an education around the world and identify opportunities for girls in STEM subjects.
Auckland Council events organisation Tātaki Auckland Unlimited is hosting the crews while they are in town.
Head of major events Chris Simpson said the Ocean Globe Race stopover holds unique significance for Tāmaki Makaurau.
“Auckland is considered the spiritual home of the Ocean Globe Race so naturally our region has a strong connection with this event,” he said. “It’s a thrill to be able to host the sailors and their teams for the race’s significant anniversary on the Waitematā, and we encourage Aucklanders and visitors to get down to the Wynyard Quarter and enjoy the stopover.”
The boats will leave Auckland for Uruguay on January 14.
