Second by 18 seconds: Oakley Marsh’s podium finish at the 2026 Le Défi Paprec

Six hundred and fifty miles. Four days and nights. One finish line, two boats, 18 seconds. That is the arithmetic of Oakley Marsh’s 2026 Le Défi Paprec. But arithmetic does not come close to telling you what he went through to get there.

The Défi Paprec is one of the premier events in the French offshore racing calendar, sailed in the Figaro Beneteau 3, a one-design class that has become the proving ground for France’s best offshore sailors. When Marsh and German co-skipper Jens Meier lined up aboard Chipmunk at the start in Perros-Guirec, it was only Marsh’s third major race in the class.

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Wolf Rock tactics: How Chipmunk gained two places at the first mark

The opening circa 15 nautical mile leg runs from Perros-Guirec to Wolf Rock, a lighthouse perched on a reef off the far tip of Cornwall. Conditions were medium to strong, upwind, with waves around 1.5 to 2 metres and wind averaging 20 knots, though squalls pushed through periodically.

Marsh had been watching those squalls carefully.

ON WOLF ROCK TACTICS

“Wherever you’re situated around the squall, you either get a lift or a knock. You can actually use them to your advantage if you get on the correct side of them.”

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Oakley Marsh

He tacked under an approaching squall to find a lift, ending up furthest west in the fleet, and catching a favourable tidal shift on the approach to the mark. Other boats, pushed by strong current, had overshot. But Chipmunk came in fast on a reaching angle and gained two places right at the mark.

44 knots and sideways rain: surviving the North Atlantic depression

What followed was, by Marsh’s own reckoning, some of the craziest sailing he has ever experienced.

A deep Atlantic low was tracking toward the fleet. From around 5pm until 4am the next morning, the race became a survival exercise dressed as a competition. Wind reached 44 knots. Rain came in sideways. Waves built to 3 metres of short, aggressive chop. Waves didn’t just wash over the boat, they broke against it, and more than once as the bow pitched down into the next trough the whole vessel would briefly launch, leaving the sailors airborne before washing them backwards along the cockpit.

This is offshore sailing.

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One Solitaire boat had dismasted at Wolf Rock. Others Solitaire had sailors climbing their rigs at sea. And yet the calculus of offshore one-design racing did not change.

He describes his mental state during the worst of it as almost contradictory. On one side, a quiet voice asking what he was doing there. On the other, something he can only describe as rock metal, a visceral drive to keep attacking, to stay in the race.

When the depression cleared and the fleet tacked onto starboard for the long circa 430 nautical mile run to Cape Finisterre—a rugged, rock-bound peninsula located on the northwester coast of Galicia, Spain—Marsh had been positioned further east than most, picking up the shift first. Chipmunk emerged from the storm in third, having gained two places through the front. But a slightly early tack cost them the full extent of the right-hand shift, and boats further inshore climbed up on better breeze. They found themselves lower than they wanted for the long stretch south, grinding through 40-plus knots and 3.5-metre seas, base layers getting wet, living at a constant 25-degree heel in the dark.

Cape Finisterre and the race-defining jibe

Cape Finisterre is a notorious weather trap. Cold upwelling suppresses sea-breeze formation, creating unpredictable conditions that can lock boats in dead calm while others sail free. Marsh and Meier had known going in that this is where everything would be decided.

Chipmunk had not arrived in a strong position. The fleet had been compressed by dying wind ahead of the Cape, and the new coastal breeze was slow to fill. Then the Chipmunk‘s spinnaker went up, the bow swung downwind, the sea flattened, and the sun came out.

After three days of just pure wetness and discomfort Marsh could count all the joys of meeting a different weather pattern. “One, finally the sea state dropped off. Two, the wind was shifting to come from behind us. Three, the sun was coming out.”

They dried their gear, slept, and reset. As the afternoon breeze began to die against the Spanish coast, Marsh spotted a section of pressure fading to the left and a new breeze building to the right. He jibed and committed. Four boats were caught in the no-wind zone. Chipmunk sailed around them, took the new breeze, and moved from fifth to second.

The race leaders, Frenchmen Thomas Dinas and Eliott Coville helming Auray Quiberon by Orlabay, were too far ahead and has sailed too well to catch. They went on to win overall, completing the course in 3 days, 23 hours, 16 minutes, and 29 seconds.

Chipmunk was still in the race, and in second place. The spinnaker pulled, and the sunset lit the water; it felt like enough.

The 650-Mile match race finish: 18 seconds between second and third

Nothing in offshore racing gives without taking something back.

The race committee shortened the course to a virtual finish line well short of Vigo as the breeze evaporated ahead of them. By sunrise, the race had become a match race. Former ski champion, Croatian Ivica Kostelic and his Turkish co-skipper Deniz Bagc, sailing onboard Amelicor had closed in the dying breeze until two or three boat lengths separated them.

What followed was six hours of upwind racing to the line, with jokes on the VHF radio about who would be buying the first round ashore.

Then came the moment that nearly unravelled it. A right-hand shift arrived on the approach to the virtual finish and Marsh was slow to react. He overlaid the gate. A door cracked open and Amelicor went through. Marsh went below, ran the numbers, fixed a precise bearing on the waypoint, and came back up.

Chipmunk crept back ahead. Then she was over the finish line, 650 miles from the start, 18 seconds separated from third Amelicor.

What Oakley Marsh’s Defi Paprec podium means for New Zealand offshore sailing

Marsh is modest about what the result proves, though the satisfaction is clearly deep. This was his third Figaro race, as an international competing against sailors who have built careers around this boat and this style of racing.

But the way he tells it, this is not really a story about an underdog. It is a story about a sailor who knew when to attack, when to hold, and when to go below and do the math while everything was on the line.

The squall tack into Wolf Rock, the tack out of the depression, the jibe to the right off Cape Finisterre, and the final bearing calculation in the dark: each was the right call made under pressure across four days without reliable rest.
The round is on him. He earned it.