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They might not look it, particularly as the latest generation of America's Cup boats zip around the Hauraki Gulf, but Mullet Boats are extreme boats in their own right.
They're certainly a bit different from most older vessels on the water but there's a good reason for that. They were originally used as fishing boats (mostly mullet, hence the name) and before refrigeration the big sails were needed to ensure fishermen could get their catch back to the market at the bottom of Queen St quickly.
The boats themselves are only 22 feet long (6.7m) but "a daring bowsprit and an impossibly long main boom" accommodates the massive amount of cloth (400 square feet or more than 37 square metres). As it says on mulletboatracing.co.nz, "this is not a boat for the faint hearted".
It's one of the things that first attracted Martin Robertson 45 years ago and he holds the record as the youngest skipper to win the Lipton Cup when he triumphed in 1976. He's now not quite as young but still winning.
This weekend he's chasing his fourth-straight Lipton Cup title in the 99th sailing of the event. If he can do that, he'll be eyeing a fifth in a row in March which would set a new record for consecutive victories in the famous class and it would be all the more special to do it in the centenary race.
Robertson designed and built Orion II in time for the 1976 Lipton Cup, which he won, and his exploits saw him feature in a New Zealand Herald article.
"They were touting me as the next Bruce Farr, or something like that, but it never eventuated," he said with a chuckle. "I had designed the boat but it actually wasn't that great a boat, in my opinion."
It was good enough to win again in 1977 and 1978 but Robertson sold it when he went overseas. He bought it again in 2007 when he went about making some improvements.
"Each winter we made sometimes quite substantial changes to the boat," he said. "She had some real strengths but had an Achilles heel and I have tried to address that, like taking big chunks out of the hull and reshaping her. She’s now about as good as she can be as a shape without starting again, and I damn near started again."
He's a Robertson from Robertson Boats, a third-generation boat building company now based in Warkworth, and it was only natural for Martin to get involved in the Lipton Cup given his wider family connection.
His great uncle Vic Lidgard won the second Lipton Cup in 1923 and went on to etch his name on the impressive trophy donated by Thomas Lipton nine times across 50 years and Vic's son Don also won it four times from 1979-82.
Robertson has also won it nine times, although he admits that number should be higher.
In one year they let slip a big lead on the run home and then hit the bottom during a spring low tide as they wrestled with the lead near the finish. And in 2013 they again held a commanding lead when they tangled with another boat.
"We saw them too late and our boom clipped their forestay," Robertson explained. "It just so happened that at that moment one of the crew had the one and only course sheet in their hand and it went over the side.
"We hadn’t written it down or memorised it. As a result, we were a little vague on what we had to do next. We ended up holding our lead for the next leg or so but headed off in the wrong direction. It wasn’t until the next boat came around the mark that we realised. That sort of stuff that should never happen."
It's added to the catalogue of stories and fables from the event and it's likely there will be more when the boats line up again on Saturday for the 99th running of the Lipton Cup.
With a fresh breeze forecast, we could see some more extreme racing from these overpowered fishing boats.
