The 28-year-old New Zealander lines up in Cherbourg for the Tour de France à la Voile, a crewed Figaro circuit race with a long history in French offshore sailing and the one he specifically named when we first spoke to him in May. He is the only Kiwi on the start line.
The race runs for two weeks along the west coast of France, stopping at five ports between Cherbourg and Lorient. Thirty starts are scheduled across that time, a combination of three days of inshore racing in each host city, followed by an offshore passage of roughly 24 hours to the next port. The first offshore leg heads to Saint-Malo. The last is the longest. The race finishes around July 12.
“It’s intense, it’s quick, and it’s kind of relentless,” Marsh told Boating New Zealand this morning, calling in from France at 4am with temperatures still sitting at 22 degrees after a day that had touched 36. “Thirty starts. That’s a lot within less than two weeks. It’s an incredible amount of racing.”
He was in his car, about to drive to Cherbourg to meet the team and finalise the race plan.
A different kind of campaign
The Défi Paprec was double-handed, with just Marsh and German co-skipper Jens Meier aboard Chipmunk. This campaign has a different shape. Marsh shares the skipper role with Joss Creswell, a Cornish sailor who serves as CEO of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Gryphon Project, an initiative designed to open pathways for international sailors into the Figaro circuit. The two have raced together before, pairing up earlier this season in the Spi Ouest-France Digilab, where they finished 12th.
Gryphon Project and RORC members make up the rest of the seven-person team, with crew rotating in and out across the two weeks. Two female sailors are on the team.
The race carries a mandatory crew composition requirement: at least two sailors under 26 and at least one female. Marsh turned 28 this year and no longer meets the age threshold himself. Creswell and the rotating crew fill the requirements.
“For Joss and me, it’s more of an opportunity to open up opportunities for people to come and be involved in this racing,” Marsh said. “For people to find out what it’s all about.”
His background in match racing in New Zealand gives him an edge on the inshore legs. The two skippers may split responsibilities, one leading the inshore series and the other the offshore passages, though nothing was settled at the time of the call.
“The right attack plan is super important,” he said.
New Zealand’s history in the race
New Zealand has competed in the Tour de France à la Voile before. In 1999, Russell Coutts skippered Sun Microsystems Team New Zealand in the event, winning the opening two legs in Scheveningen before falling back in the overall standings. In 2001, Hamish Pepper won individual inshore stages, but the team finished 5th overall. No New Zealand team has competed since.
Marsh has been building toward this race since before the Défi Paprec. “I’m trying to change that,” he said of the 25-year absence earlier this season. “What I’m working on is potentially a project where Kiwis can come over here and still be involved and sail for New Zealand. Maybe next year and then hopefully have a full Kiwi team on the start line for the Tour de France à la Voile.”
The race format has changed over the decades, from its Mumm 30 era through a period in trimarans before a hiatus. It returned in the Figaro Beneteau 3, and Marsh believes this is around its third or fourth year back in that format. The fleet is growing, but internationals remain rare.
“The fleet here still lacks a few internationals,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to do — get more people involved in it.”
The season so far
For readers following his campaign, Marsh arrives at this start off the back of a result that quietly announced him in the Figaro world. Second overall at the Défi Paprec in May, aboard Chipmunk after a 650-mile race that included 44-knot conditions, a North Atlantic depression, and a match race finish 18 seconds ahead of third place. It was his third Figaro race as an international.
The path that brought him here started on the Wellington waterfront, where, as a 10-year-old, he watched Mike Sanderson sail the Volvo Ocean Race into the harbour. He grew up racing through the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club youth scheme, completed a sailmaking apprenticeship at Doyle Sails, and graduated from the RNZYS Mastercard Youth Training Programme in 2021. When COVID stalled the New Zealand sailing scene, he moved to Europe. Team Malizia gave him a foot in the door as a technician on the build of Malizia 3, close to the sport’s elite but watching from the dock as the boats left.
“Pushing the boat off every time didn’t really sit right with me as a sailor,” he said. “So I thought, how can I get there? How can I be on board?”
From Malizia, he moved to sailmaking for the French America’s Cup team in Barcelona, then an Admiral’s Cup campaign in the UK with Team Jolt, then the Figaro circuit. Around 80 percent of Ocean Race sailors have passed through the Figaro. Marsh knows the path.
What comes next
Marsh’s season does not end with the Tour de France à la Voile. He is entered in the Figamore in Lorient and, after that, La Ventura, a two-leg race from France to Lisbon and back.
He will be sending us updates throughout the two weeks. Check back for updates.
