Conrad Colman's all-Kiwi crew aboard MSIG Europe spent the small hours of day three fighting broken gear rather than the weather. In 28 to 30 knots of breeze, the furling line on their J2 headsail snapped right at the end of the furl, and the sail blew back out, fully deployed and completely uncontrollable.
"We had the sail out flapping uncontrollably and no way to get it back in again," Colman said. The crew had to bear away hard to take the power out of the sail before Colman and Elie Pirnay spent two and a half hours on the bow, in the dark, rerouting the furling line back into the drum by hand so they could regain control of the sail. "That was not a fun way to spend the day, that's for sure," Colman said.
The repair cost them dearly on the tracker. It shows up clearly in the boat's heading data, well off the fleet's line, and has left MSIG Europe 175.1 nautical miles off the lead, the biggest gap of the race so far. It's a hard morning's work for a crew already sailing the oldest, only foil-less boat in the fleet.
Malizia back in front
While MSIG Europe worked through its repair, the lead at the front of the fleet changed hands again. Malizia lost the overall lead to United by the Ocean overnight into day two, then clawed it back, and by day three's tracker snapshot held a 30.4nm advantage over United by the Ocean, its largest margin of the race.
Ocean Race Atlantic: Distance to Finish
Tracker snapshots, Day 1 to Day 3
Source: The Ocean Race Atlantic live tracker
Malizia backed that up on the water, winning the day's Super Sprint outright, 12.02 nautical miles covered in the 20-minute window, described in the live broadcast as "a different league" compared to the rest of the fleet. It's Malizia's second Super Sprint win in three days, and the cumulative scoreboard now has them well clear on points, with DMG Mori second and Francesca Clapcich's 11th Hour Racing close behind in third, despite DMG Mori sitting only fourth on the water itself.
Gear failures across the fleet
MSIG Europe's furling line wasn't the only piece of gear giving trouble. Aboard DMG Mori, an inspection hatch on the aft ballast tank blew off under the slamming of the boat, and the crew had to rob a hatch from elsewhere to keep using ballast at all. They're now sailing the rest of the leg with no working hatch on that aft tank, a problem they'll simply have to manage rather than fix at sea.
Malizia had its own frustrations too, forced off its preferred easterly line by unexpected wind headers and losing ground it's since had to work hard to win back.
Weather still calling the shots
The whole fleet remains hard on the wind, beating upwind into a strong breeze out of the southeast, with squally, changeable conditions expected to continue for at least another 24 hours. If the boats can hold that breeze and ride the front as forecast, race organisers believe conditions over the next one to three days could be fast enough to threaten the current 24-hour distance record: 641.13 nautical miles, set by Malizia's predecessor boat during an Atlantic crossing in the 2022-23 edition of the round-the-world Ocean Race. After that, the forecast turns trickier again, with a lighter patch expected mid-Atlantic and a tight, decision-heavy approach into Lorient to come.
For MSIG Europe, the forecast means something more immediate: a chance to make up ground on a fleet that has, this time, watched one of its own fight the same kind of trouble Colman's crew knows all too well.
