We recently fished the Kubota Billfish Classic in our brand new 800HTWA. As many of you will know, the forecast for this year’s competition was far from ideal.

On the first day, the traditional shotgun start was cancelled due to the weather. Many boats chose not to fish for the first couple of days, and several that did head out turned around pretty quickly. We were getting seas up to about 3 metres coming from the east, which made for a head‑on sea and a big punch to get out of the bay. We were doing around 13 knots punching into it, and the boat handled the conditions extremely well with very few hard landings.

We had plenty of water coming onto the windscreens—this was caused by the waves hitting the front wheels. Because we have dual front wheels, they tend to grab a bit more water in rough conditions compared to a single wheel or no wheel setup. Once we got past the point, we headed towards Red Mercury with the plan to catch some Kahawai and tow them around for a Black Marlin or Kingfish. We picked up Kahawai easily, along with a couple of Snapper for dinner.

We towed the Kahawai for a few hours with no inquiries. With the weather only getting worse, we decided to call it and head home. We cruised back at roughly 16–18 knots for most of the run. We had turned the Sea Keepers onto manual prior to heading back and ended up forgetting about them, essentially running home with them tucked up and not doing much. Even so, the ride was really impressive with no trim tabs—especially considering we were running slightly side‑on and then with the sea. It proved to be a great test of the boat’s stability in a surfing‑type situation.

Since we had an amphibious boat and friends in Opito, we drove the boat up the beach, grabbed a ride back to Whitianga to get the trailer, and returned to pick the boat up. By then the rain was setting in and the crew was getting hungry. We finished the day with our snapper cooked up at the Mercury Bay Gamefish Club.

Day two was a lay day, and we then fished hard on Friday through to the early hours of Saturday morning. The day started extremely foggy, giving us the perfect opportunity to trial our new Simrad radar. The radar displays the course and speed of each vessel, allowing us to safely zig‑zag our way through the boats on our way to Castle Island.

We caught plenty of Kahawai and sent them out as livebaits in hope of a Marlin or big Kingfish. Castle was alive with baitfish, so we decided to spend a good chunk of the day working the area. Unfortunately, this only resulted in a small Mako that wasn’t much bigger than our livebait.

From there we put the lures in and trolled north to try our luck at a nighttime swordfish. We managed a bite straight away, but that was it for the night. Our plan was to fish until midnight and make our way back in before the wind picked up. With the Simrad radar and Mercury autopilot, the trip back in the dark was extremely easy. The ride was so comfortable in the 800HTWA that I (Tim) even fell asleep up the front.

We arrived back in the early hours of Saturday morning. Having the wheels on the boat made life extremely easy—straight up the ramp and down the road to our accommodation. Although we didn’t land a competition‑winning fish, we had a great time fishing a well‑run comp with some amazing fish caught, and it was the perfect opportunity to give the new 800HTWA a proper workout.

Bring on next year.https://youtu.be/KyCZpl3TF_s