When the sail blew out

Captain Shay was so nimble on the helm I hadn't even realized the sail was loose until we'd come through the wind onto the starboard tack. The monumental multi-ton load on the sails of a 13 metre catamaran in 15-20 knot winds wiped away the easy, breezy confidence accumulated over five days of ghosting along in light winds. No harm done though.

The culprit was a dodgy bowline knot I'd used to fasten the sheet to the foresail. The bowline had a tail that was too short and under the immense loads and constant whipping in the gusts as we crested 10 knots of true velocity - the fastest I've ever experienced under sail - the knot came undone and the sail blew out. Loud, momentarily brick-shittingly-unsettling but ultimately there was no damage and nobody was worse for it. Perhaps the opposite.

It was the fianl day of a 6-days odyssey in the Hauraki Gulf off Auckland on a yacht often discussed over pints or a late night single malt in London when we lived with Shay in Shepherds Bush.

How to describe a better week in life?

Take a heady dose of good mates: a couple of renewable energy engineers building their own sustainable house, a former marketeer-turned-author dissecting the role of marketing in manufacturing wants masquerading as needs, an environmental policymaker, a hard man from BP, a mechanical engineer who designs operating room equipment, a money man who buys corporations, a couple of unemployed bums [you can guess who they are] and a woman working on a Swedish-Kiwi fusion cookbook. Add a gracefully-lined, ice-breaker strong sailboat, plenty of sun and swimming, a dash of fishing, a dusting of seabirds and a big slug of eating, drinking and launching water ballons from a catapult at neighbouring superyachts.

Shake it up and what you get is about the most sublime cocktail imaginable to enjoy the sunset over the volcano of Rangitoto.

Sign me up for a life of this.