Boating losers are grinners

63 hours, 12 minutes and 24 seconds.

That's how long it took 'Identity Crisis' to sail from Sydney to Southport.

The boat crossed the line in the wee small hours on Tuesday morning, and was the last placed vessel in the race.

Skipper Ian Thomson isn't too worried about the 'shame' of coming last, "It's a privilege. We didn't really come last, there's a lot of boats who confused this race with a Coffs race, they're down in Coffs Harbour still! We did finish, and that was our main aim."

"We made a big blunder putting the spinnaker up on the first night. When we tried to get it down we wrapped it round the forestay. It was my error, I asked to put it up. We ended up having to go into Newcastle to get rid of it. When we did go into Newcastle we thought we'd take the opportunity to have a bite to eat and bit of a snooze. The snooze turned into a full blown sleep. We ended up leaving six hours later."

"Being at the back end of the fleet we copped the worst. We got gusts in excess of 50 knots on that first evening. It's fairly full on, especially when you've got a 'kite' wrapped around your forestay and it's powering you in the wrong direction. Hard work on the whole"...Even the dolphins abandoned us! Every time we got close to a boat in the fleet, they seemed to pull out. It left us a fair way behind, I think we were 50 or 60 nautical miles behind the last boat."

"A quarter of the fleet didn't make it into here, with all sorts of damage. We made it, and we had a damn good time celebrating it last night"

Don't think it's the shame of crossing the line in last position that concerned the crew of Identity Crisis, they had other things on their minds "the worst thing is you don't spend as much time at the bar!" Ian Thomson.

"It's about the camaraderie of the crew", Ian explains, "you've only got yourselves and the elements. Being out in the middle of the ocean, when you've got the dolphins jumping on the bow, it's hard to explain, yachting's a passion."

Ian and his crew will have a chance to spend more time at a bar when they set sail in the Brisbane to Gladstone race at Easter.