The Ocean Race Atlantic was really two races in one. Five foiling IMOCAs fought for the win in Lorient. A long way behind them, sailing a 20-year-old, foil-less keel boat, was Aotearoa Ocean Racing.
The crew
Conrad Colman skippered MSIG Europe alongside Anna Merchant and Megan Thomson, both former NZ Sailor of the Year winners who first raced together on the match-racing team Racing 2.0. Elie Pirnay, a late call-up after Aaron Hume-Merry withdrew injured before the start, rounded out the sailing team. Georgia Schofield sailed as onboard reporter.
The breakdowns
A snapped furling line on day three, fixed by hand over two and a half hours on the bow in the dark. A boom track ripped clean off days later. Through it all, Colman’s line on the gap to the fleet became something of a motto: “You want to beat people when they’re at their best, not when they’re broken down.”
The results
Last more than once in the daily Super Sprints, but as high as second on the right day, proof the crew could hold their own against newer boats in the right conditions. By day eight, Anna Merchant put it plainly: “We’re not really racing against much of the other fleet at this point because they’re a lot faster than us.”
The finish
A final race against a closing high-pressure system, the crew’s own shorthand for it simple: “Winter is coming.” They crossed the line in Lorient at 21:57 on September 12, more than a day and a half after the rest of the fleet, on their own steam.
The verdict, from Colman himself
“It was a race full of learnings, full of firsts. The whole principle of this event, of our participation in this event, is to transmit some of my hard-won knowledge in the IMOCA class into the new generation of New Zealand sailors, and I think that we’ve definitely checked that box.”
This was never built to win the Ocean Race Atlantic outright, and everyone involved said so plainly and often. It was built to put a young Kiwi crew through real IMOCA miles ahead of a bigger goal, the full round-the-world Ocean Race still to come. On the right day, in the right breeze, MSIG Europe was reportedly within sniffing distance of 500 nautical miles in 24 hours. The boat just never had foils.
Last across the line. Nothing left in the tank. A class of its own.
