I had been in New Zealand a couple of months and was starting to feel a bit guilty that, having flown halfway around the world, I hadn't made any attempt to meet my pal Loonytunes. I got my chance over New Years when the Royal1 Port Nicholson Yacht Club announced a race from Wellington to his art-deco paradise home of Napier. And, me being me, the natural thing to do was to hitch a ride on a racing yacht - achieved without much difficulty by putting an ad on the club's notice board.

Actually I started working up to this almost as soon as I arrived in Wellington and have raced with Distraction, a well-found Farr 10.20 ( 33'), a couple of times already. It always amazes me how easy it is to find someone prepared to invite you out on their boat and, as an added bonus this time, the boat's owner is a pneumatic green-eyed doll named Bindy. Sniffy, her partner, usually helms the boat and the other regular crew member is Sharyn - responsible for pulling on ropes and supplying chocolate. We also have two 'ringers', Brendan and Mark, on board but I'm not really sure what they do because whenever anything happens I have to be at the front of the boat taking care of 'my' sails and ropes, and drinking seawater - or rum, of which there is usually a plentiful supply after racing.

We had a practise run across the Cook Strait a week before racing, borrowed a bottle from the crew of Andiamo, and yours truly fell overboard on arrival in Marlborough Sound. (With a little tugging and prying of fingers from my alleged crewmates!) Such is sailing, and it serves to prepare the mind for the tribulations of spending a week getting wet inside and out. Preparing for the race it sounds as if there's going to be a lot of getting wet. Winds are forecast to be 30 knots, with lots of that famous New Zealand rain. Bindy is a little apprehensive, and I ask the club's Vice Commodore why. His reply is that New Zealand's east coast is 'a c**t of a place' and when it all starts to go horribly wrong there's no place to run to, no place to hide.

This coming from a man who is famed for disappearing off the front of a yacht during a race and reappearing, hand over hand and spluttering, at the back - only to run forward without a word and complete what he was doing. Inspiring stuff. (Although losing a little of its impact when you hear someone call him Cuddles.) And so I square my shoulders and go to join the ranks of explorers who have set out into the dangerous unknown for millennia, without even the promise of a party at the end of it. In fact I learn later that some of the charts we are using are based on Captain Cook's original survey - no one has got around to updating them yet! This really is going to be excitement, adventure and really wet and wild things!

But first I need waterproofing.

I learned to sail in San Diego, where shorts and T-shirts are usually adequate and shoes an extravagance, but here nothing but the best will suffice. Although people are usually willing to loan a casual crewmember whatever gear he may need, for this long a trip I have to bite the bullet and go buy a full set of made-in-New Zealand Musto foul weather gear. It's absolutely pissing with rain and I'm stalking the docks looking for Mike, the owner of Barton Marine Suppliers and Flying Boat, in the hope of negotiating a discount. He's busy water blasting his bottom to make it smooth and shiny for the race, but Bindy's name works wonders and after clothing me head-to-toe he still leaves me with a whole $30 in the bank. I figure that locally made stuff should be appropriate for local conditions, and try not to ask myself who's going to feed me until my next pay day in a fortnight.

And finally we leave such mundane matters behind, drop the mooring lines in the water, and head out into the windy gloom of a midsummer's morning in Wellington.