Six yachts have signed on to sail up Australia’s East Coast and across the Coral Sea to New Caledonia’s capital Noumea as part of the 2025 Ponant Sydney Noumea Yacht Race.

The competitors are Awen, Llama II, Pacman, Smuggler, Serene Summer, and Wild Thing 100.

CYCA Media caught up with a few of the competitors. In this piece we meet Pacman’s co-skipper – Peter Elkington.

Sailing 1064 nautical miles double handed is a difficult task. But it helps when the co-skippers have known each other for 30 years. That’s the case for Peter Elkington and Scott Cavanough, co-skippers of the Young 11 Pacman – the only Double Handed entry in the race.

In an interview with the ABC’s Andrew McGarry, Elkington outlined how trust between co-skippers is key to successfully racing double handed.

“It’s a trust thing,” Elkington said. “He [Cavanough] knows the way I think, I know the way he thinks, he knows my strengths and weaknesses and I know his … it comes down to trust.

“I’m more focused on tactics and navigation, he’s more the bowman — he tends to work outside. It means he or I can go to sleep knowing if something has to be done, it will get done.”

Elkington and Cavanough are both accomplished sailors. Elkington has competed in 17 Sydney Hobarts, many of them as navigator on some of the fastest yachts in the fleet including Peter Harburg’s Black Jack yachts (the Reichel Pugh 66 and Volvo 70).

Cavanough has a plethora of shorthanded sailing experience, including winning the 2011/12 Global Ocean Race with co-skipper Conrad Colman. The pair have raced in their last three Rolex Sydney Hobarts (2022, ’23 and ’24) together aboard Pacman. Their best result was second on Double Handed IRC in 2022.

They both have an affinity for offshore sailing, which puts them in a good position ahead of the Ponant Sydney Noumea. “What I really like about it [offshore racing] is we switch off from the rest of the world,” Elkington told the ABC.

“We’re just concentrating on our jobs and sailing. And I really like the boat, being out there by myself (or with one other person), and the challenge of doing everything myself.

“It’s different from the rest of life, going at a million miles an hour, but here the job is just to do this. The rest of the world, that doesn’t really matter — it’s just the best [feeling].”