Chips and a beer reward long row

Shaun Quincey emerges from the water at Ninety Mile Beach to a joyous welcome from his mother, Nanette. Photo / Greg Bowker

After rowing nearly 4000km across the Tasman, all Shaun Quincey needed was some Kiwi tucker to make him feel good.

"I lost 17 kilograms on the journey, but I'm feeling good with some beer and chips in me," the 25-year-old Aucklander said last night, after 54 days at sea.

"I'm finding it quite hard to walk at the moment after that much time sitting in a confined space, and I'm a bit sunburnt and trying to get used to open spaces again, but generally it's pretty good."

Quincey yesterday became the second person to row solo across the Tasman, following his father, Colin, who achieved the feat in the opposite direction in 1977.

The straight line distance across the Tasman is 2200km but winds and currents meant Shaun Quincey travelled much further - around 3900km.

Mr Quincey senior, who lives in Australia, is to arrive in New Zealand tomorrow.

But his mother, Nanette, was on Ninety Mile beach in the Far North to see him land at 12.30pm yesterday.

She had been up since 3am waiting for her youngest son to set foot on Kiwi sand.

"I've been at sea for weeks and weeks. I won't feel right until I've done my own x-ray examination."

She anxiously watched pounding waves at lunchtime when her son, who swam the last 300m because it was too dangerous to row to shore, finally stood up in the water waving a New Zealand flag.

She was the first to reach him, followed by Quincey's big brother Ben, 28.

Quincey's 7.3 metre Tasman Trespasser, his home away from home, was left to find its own way ashore.

It washed up about 100m from him unharmed.

Quincey said achieving his goal was "absolutely brilliant. It is one of the best feelings I have ever had."

The Auckland student, who kept up a constant stream of jokes from his Twitter site over the journey - "pretty slow day, saw a whale ... we talked about feelings and then he left" - was met by a crowd of about 500.

"I'm glad I hit the beach ... there's no better country to aim for than New Zealand. Although we had some trouble aiming here, I think we ended up rowing 4000km."

Asked if he would have a son who would repeat the Tasman effort, Quincey was unequivocal.

"There's no chance of that at all."

He'd faced difficulties such as breaking his water-making desalinator and a couple of oars, but his surf lifesaving training made him more concerned yesterday with wellwishers' safety than his own.

He hustled them out of the water as quickly as his wobbly legs would take him, stopping only to shake off some dizziness and kiss girlfriend Lisa Jones, who co-ordinated the support team throughout the day.

Mrs Quincey said she couldn't be happier with her son's condition. "He's lost a bit of weight but we'll fix that."

Ahipara resident Hiki Trethewey said she'd watched a local kuia calling him home with a karanga, but everything happened so fast that Quincey was on dry land before she could finish.

"That final wave - it pushed him home to us."

- Additional reporting, NZPA