A Class of Its Own: Aotearoa Ocean Racing's Atlantic Crossing

The Ocean Race Atlantic was a very different race for Aotearoa Ocean Racing. At the front, five modern foiling IMOCAs charged across the North Atlantic towards a remarkably close finish in Lorient. Conrad Colman and his crew were racing a very different machine. Their 20 year old, non foiling IMOCA could not match the outright pace of the newer boats, so their challenge became getting everything possible from what they had. Despite broken gear and relentless days with little sleep, they kept pushing the boat hard all the way to Lorient.

The crew

Colman skippered MSIG Europe alongside Anna Merchant, Megan Thomson and Elie Pirnay. Merchant and Thomson, both former NZ Sailor of the Year winners, first raced together with match racing team Racing 2.0, long before either had any connection to this event. Pirnay was a late call up after Kiwi sailor Aaron Hume Merry withdrew injured before the start. Belgian by birth, Pirnay had spent ten days aboard with a largely Kiwi crew and was probably entitled to honorary Kiwi status by the finish. Georgia Schofield was onboard as the OBR (onboard reporter), flying the drone that provided some of the best footage of the entire race.

Ten days at sea

It started with a furling line. Somewhere in the small hours of day three, MSIG Europe's J2's furling line snapped in 28 to 30 knots of breeze, and Colman and Pirnay spent two and a half hours on the bow in the dark, rerouting it back into the drum by hand. Days later came the boom track, ripped clean off after banging against the wind vane in rough conditions, one more repair added to a growing list. Colman never made an excuse for any of it. Asked about the gap to the fleet, his answer became something of a motto for the whole campaign: "You want to beat people when they're at their best, not when they're broken down."

The Super Sprints backed that up with results. MSIG Europe finished last more than once in the daily 20-minute dashes, but also climbed as high as second, proof that on the right day, in the right breeze, this crew could hold their own against boats a generation newer. By day eight, with the front of the fleet long gone, Anna Merchant put the campaign's honest position into words better than anyone else could: "We're not really racing against much of the other fleet at this point because they're a lot faster than us. At the moment we're just trying to make sure we sail as fast as we can to stay in the system."

The finish came down to a race against the weather itself. With a high-pressure system closing in behind them and the breeze fading fast, the crew's own half-joking shorthand for it, watching the clouds shrink and the sky change, was simple: "Winter is coming." They pushed through it anyway, crossing the line in Lorient at 21:57 on September 12, more than a day and a half after the rest of the fleet.

What it was all for

Colman's own summary, recorded for the race's highlights reel, is the line to end on: "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."

From the start, this campaign was never really about winning The Ocean Race Atlantic. It was about putting a young Kiwi crew through genuine IMOCA miles, dealing with the breakdowns, fatigue and pressure of a long distance offshore race. All of it was preparation for the bigger goal, the full round the world Ocean Race starting next year. On that measure, and after ten days at sea, it was a job well done. On the right day, in the right breeze, MSIG Europe reportedly came within sniffing distance of covering 500 nautical miles in 24 hours. The old boat still had plenty of pace. What it never had was foils.

The results sheet will show MSIG Europe last into Lorient. It will not show quite how hard they sailed to get there.