The broaching of the Tauranga yacht called Extreme gave cause for a popular saying on Wednesday night – ‘arse about kite'.

The yacht's kite, or spinnaker, hauled the back end of the boat out of the water when wind and tide combined to test the crew's ability to hang on.

This is what ‘arse about kite' means. Photo: Murray de Lues.

'It was a fresh breeze we got down off Hunters Creek,” says skipper David Peet.

'We were doing about 16 knots and the wind was against the tide, so it was quite rough.

'Extreme buried into the back of a wave.

'As soon as it does that the speed slows down a bit and everything loads up.”

The spinnaker pole downhaul stripped the casing of the rope off its sheath, the boom went up high and Extreme lost stability.

'The sail was let out and we got back on stream again, but the person who pulled it back on again, with the casing off it we couldn't tie it off or cleat it off.

'While he was looking round for some way to tie it on, it loaded back up and the weight was too much for him to hold – and it was all over for us.”

The boat nearly went right over.

'Until the sails let go or something lets go, it won't pop back up again,” says David. 'You can see a whole lot of white knuckles hanging on.

'It seems like half an hour but it isn't that long.

'The crew got the sails under control again.

'We blew the spinnaker halyard out the top of the mast and pulled the sail in over the back and finished the race without using the spinnaker.”

Everybody knew what was going to happen, and hung on, says David.

'It all happened so quickly and there's not much you can do while it's going over and you wait until you can do something I guess.

'The boat is a very lightweight boat and it doesn't have a lot of weight in the keel. That's one of the reasons why it goes so fast. It livens our Wednesday nights up.”