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or Mark Roberts, rum racing isn’t just
an occasional hobby – it’s a way of life.
You might know Roberts by his almost
universal nickname of Moulët, a tribute
to his distinctive mullet hairstyle.
Roberts has been sailing all his life, rum
racing for more than 30 years, and is now out there every
week, rain or shine, living the rum race dream.
He came home – four years ago – from eight years of
working on superyachts, with the aim of buying a boat
which could be a rum race champion.
“I wanted to go out and have some fun. hen I got an
email saying this boat was coming on the market, and I’d
bought it before I’d even inished reading.”
‘his boat’ is Extreme, a Rocket 31 designed by Jim Young.
For Roberts, Extreme was his ‘dream boat’, and had had his
eye on it ever since it was irst launched in the early 1990s.
He bought the boat with a largely silent partner and
set about looking for sponsors to cover running costs.
FS Trades, a division of specialist recruiting consultancy
Franklin Smith, is the main sponsor.
Extreme certainly lives up to her name, and certainly
turned a few heads when she was irst launched. With
an overall length of 29 feet 10 inches (a smidgen over
9m), she is 14 feet 7 inches (4.4 m) at max beam, with
a massive open cockpit, lared sides and a lifting keel.She was the line honours winner of the Coastal Classic
Division 4 for ive years from 1993, and held the under
30-footer record up until 2009. Today we take sailing
angles downwind under asymmetrics for granted; in the
1990s this was pioneering stuf.
None of these extras and fancy stuf for the rum race,
though, thank you very much: it’s strictly main and jib for
the races. Lidgard Sails is another of Extreme’s sponsors,
providing a set of sails speciically designed for the rigours
of rum racing i.e. reaching around the harbour.
“People laugh at me and say ‘you’ve got a race boat, why
do you only go rum racing?’ To be honest, this way I get to
do forty-ive races a year, and most race boats might only
do twenty,” he says. “I’ve done a lifetime of yacht racing –
I grew up at Bucklands Beach and raced a lot down there,
too. I still take it competitively and I’m still competitive.
But we have the most fun out of all the boats by far.”
It certainly looks like it, as Roberts licks through the
photos on his phone. he Christmas season seems to be a
particular excuse for dressing up and general shenanigans- Jesus with a mullet, anyone? – but other dress-up themes
have included Star Wars (on May 4th, of course), cowboys
and cowgirls, pirates and pink tutus.
he rum race celebrating last year’s America’s Cup
win was another big day: under cover of darkness, an
exercycle was ixed in the middle of the cockpit, and one
F
Friday afternoon, the sun sparkling on the Waitemata Harbour. Across
Auckland, people are clocking o, heading out to ‘meetings’ and taking
advantage of working flexi-time. They’re o to the week’s most important
appointment: the Havana Club rum race at the RNZYS.LEFT If you need
help with sailing
the boat, ask
someone else –
we’re busy.
OPPOSITE
Extreme – the
Rocket 31
designed by Jim
Young.