The Ocean Race Atlantic is finally away from New York, and it took longer than expected to get there. Six IMOCAs spent the night before the start picking their way through protected waters off the American coast, hemmed in by a speed limit designed to keep them clear of whales and other marine mammals. That restriction wasn't actually what held things up. It was the wind, or the lack of it, that pushed the real start further offshore and later than planned.
Once the breeze arrived, it came from an awkward angle, hard on the nose for most of the fleet. Bad news if you're chasing top speed on a brand new foiler. Good news, for a while at least, for the oldest boat on the start line.
An old boat's moment
MSIG Europe, sailed by Kiwi Conrad Colman, is coming up on 20 years old in design terms and carries no foils, just daggerboards. Upwind, in a breeze that doesn't favour the foiling boats' angles, that's about as good as it gets for an underdog. Colman has been open all along about where his boat sits against the newer designs in the fleet, and for a brief spell after the gun, that honesty looked like it might be rewarded. Early on, MSIG Europe sat inside the top three, alongside Embrace the Challenge and United by the Ocean, the reigning Ocean Race Europe champions skippered by Paul Meilhat.
There's a strong Kiwi thread through MSIG Europe's campaign beyond Colman himself. Anna Merchant, New Zealand's National Sailor of the Year, is part of his young crew, most of them under 30, and already well into their first 24 hours at sea by the time the cameras caught her mid-toothbrush down below.
Malizia dominates the Super Sprint
Not long after the gun, race organisers ran a 20 minute "Super Sprint," a race within the race that resets the leaderboard regardless of where each boat sits on the course to Lorient. Every team got a clean shot at it, and in a building sea state with the breeze up, the sprint turned into a genuine speed test rather than a formality.
Team Malizia, with Boris Herrmann hand steering on the wheel of his brand new boat, his head out in the spray while every other skipper stayed tucked into an enclosed cockpit, simply sailed away from the fleet. Malizia covered 6.3 nautical miles in the 20 minute window, comfortably clear of the chasing pack. DMG Mori was next best, with Embrace the Challenge a solid third.
For MSIG Europe, the sprint told a harder truth. Without foils, and with the wind swinging enough for the newer boats to lean on theirs, Colman's crew slipped to last. One result twenty minutes into a week-long race won't decide anything, but it's exactly the gap Colman has been talking about since before he even crossed the start line.
Why the fleet isn't sailing at Lorient
One of the quirks of ocean racing that's easy to miss on a tracker map: the fleet isn't pointing at the finish. Lorient sits roughly northeast of the fleet's current position, but every boat has pushed south and southeast instead, chasing the breeze rather than the rhumb line. A low pressure system is expected to build across the course over the next 72 hours, and the router's advice, echoed by every team so far, is to position now for where that wind will be rather than where the finish line sits today.
Expect more calls like this over the coming week. Lincoln Dews, sailing aboard Embrace the Challenge, described the first 48 hours as some of the most physically demanding of the whole crossing, with plenty of sail changes and broken sleep as the fleet works through the early routing options.
Day 1 standings
By the end of the first day, the positions on the tracker read:
| Pos | Boat | DTL (nm) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Malizia | Leading |
| 2 | 11th Hour Racing (Francesca Clapcich) | 6.5 |
| 3 | United by the Ocean | 8.1 |
| 4 | Embrace the Challenge | 12.3 |
| 5 | DMG Mori | 17.7 |
| 6 | MSIG Europe | 26.4 |
Herrmann has turned that sprint pace into a real lead on the water, while Clapcich's boat, the former Team Malizia hull that once held the 24 hour distance record, is the day's standout mover.
For Colman and his young crew aboard MSIG Europe, day one has laid bare exactly how much foils are worth in this fleet. There are six or seven days of racing left to Lorient, and a low-pressure system still to sail into.
