Conrad Colman has assembled a fully New Zealand crew for the Aotearoa Ocean Racing campaign, confirming the team will compete in the Ocean Race Atlantic, which departs New York on 1 September and finishes in Lorient, France.
Every sailor in the squad comes from the domestic scene back home, with race regulations requiring two men and two women among the sailing crew. Colman has drawn on young Kiwis active on events such as the Three Kings Race, RNI, and the PIC Coastal Classic to fill those positions. Georgia Schofield joins the campaign as on-board media. Schofield covered the last Ocean Race World with Holcim and is already a familiar figure within the Colman team. One berth remains to be finalised, with a full lineup announcement to follow shortly.
When the boat crosses the start line in New York, it will be the first time a Kiwi crew has raced an IMOCA 60 across the Atlantic since Mike Sanderson in 2004.
The programme is backed by MSIG Europe, the renamed successor to MS Amlin, now in its fourth year alongside Colman. Those who followed the Vendée Globe campaign run under the MS Amlin name will recognise the continuity. For the Atlantic crossing, Colman will campaign the non-foiling IMOCA he knows well. He is clear-eyed about where that boat sits relative to a fleet that now includes the latest generation of foiling machines, and he is not pretending otherwise.
"We're not going to win the transatlantic race," he says. "But what we can do, without significant competitive pressure, is focus on building the team and the practices required to work together as a high-performance unit. That is exactly what we need."
With the Atlantic programme funded and crewed, Colman's attention has turned to the larger objective: a full Ocean Race around the world. The start date is 17 January 2026, and the fleet is scheduled to reach Auckland in 2027 on the direct leg from Europe. The window for assembling a programme is tight.
A new-generation foiling IMOCA carries a price tag of between 10 and 11 million euros. Colman is not chasing a new hull. A second-hand latest-generation boat sits at around half that figure, with annual operating costs of approximately 3 million. Spread across a three-year campaign covering the Ocean Race, the Vendée Globe, and the Ocean Race Europe, the total budget runs into millions of dollars.
Colman makes the case for a proven second-hand boat directly. "By going in with a second-hand boat that is well-proven and very fast, I believe that through boat speed, knowledge, and reliability, we can be just as competitive as a new boat that, in reality, will not achieve its performance threshold in the short time available," he says.
MSIG Europe has confirmed it will not be the title partner for the round-the-world campaign, which means Colman is actively seeking New Zealand corporate support. He is open about how that search is going.
"I am struggling thus far. Part of that is the challenging business environment in New Zealand for the past couple of years. I feel underrepresented in my home market, simply because I'm not there most of the time."
He is targeting companies with a global story to tell, or international businesses with a meaningful New Zealand presence. What Colman is offering extends well beyond a logo on the hull. He points to something concrete: his advocacy inside the Vendée Globe for renewable energy led race officials to mandate it across the entire fleet for the next edition. He is the only person to have raced around the world twice without burning fossil fuels, using solar power to run his systems, recyclable membrane sails from OneSails, and an electric van on land through a partnership with LDV in France.
"When I did this in 2016 I was looked at as being a bit kooky. Now the rest of the space is starting to catch up."
Colman grew up in Auckland watching The Ocean Race arrive in the Waitemata. That spectacle sent him to France, into a Mini 650, and eventually into the IMOCA class. Now he wants to complete that journey in reverse, sailing into the Waitemata as part of the fleet, with a team of Kiwis who got there together.
"What I want to do is inspire the next young fellow to come and do this kind of adventure themselves, discover a bigger, brighter world, and figure out how to look after it along the way."
The Ocean Race is coming to Auckland in 2027. The question is whether New Zealand sends a team.
