Paul Meilhat's United by the Ocean has won the inaugural Ocean Race Atlantic, crossing the finish line off Lorient after a finale that stayed in doubt almost to the very last mile.
It was that close. For most of Thursday morning United by the Ocean and Francesca Clapcich's 11th Hour Racing sailed in what was effectively a dead heat, the two boats trading the lead by fractions of a nautical mile as they closed on the French coast. By early afternoon Meilhat's French crew had nosed ahead, and this time there was no clawing it back.
The finish capped a 3,000 nautical mile dash across the Atlantic from New York. For much of the final 24 hours, the destiny of the race seemed to shift by the hour.
As late as Thursday morning, Kojiro Shiraishi's DMG MORI Global One held a slender advantage, with less than 25 miles separating the top four boats. Nicolas Lunven, sailing aboard DMG MORI Global One, had called it precisely beforehand: "The wind is dropping, so the fleet will close up again before the finish. We may be in the lead right now, but everything could still change." He was right.
By early afternoon, 11th Hour Racing had briefly wrestled the lead back, less than half a nautical mile ahead of United by the Ocean, with DMG MORI Global One fewer than four nm behind in third and Boris Herrmann's Team Malizia fourth, 10 nm off the pace. The southerly breeze along the Morbihan coast kept shifting character, and the leaderboard shifted with it.
Six miles. That was all that separated potential victory from fourth place at one stage on Thursday, a gap that in ocean racing terms is nothing at all.
The tension showed in the messages coming off the boats all week. "The fleet is still very tightly bunched and it's thrilling," Clapcich said. "It's great to experience, and I hope it's just as enjoyable for everyone following us back on land." Herrmann, never one to give up on Malizia's chances, added: "We're giving it everything we've got, hanging in there, and the race won't be over until we cross the finish line. We'll see if we can still pull off a surprise."
Benjamin Ferré summed up the mood best earlier in the week: "Four boats can still win this race, with four different strategies." That proved almost exactly right, right up until the wind finally decided things off Lorient.
Further back, Embrace the Challenge in fifth and MSIG Europe in sixth were fighting their own contest, well behind the leading quartet but with a more direct route to the finish. Conrad Colman, on board, was relaxed about it: "Overall, things are looking good, and we mainly have wind all the way to the finish."
There's no New Zealand entry in this fleet, but the tight, unpredictable finish, with four boats in with a shout deep into the closing hours, will have plenty of appeal for Kiwi shorthanded and ocean racing followers who were keeping an eye on the tracker from home.
United by the Ocean go into the record books as winners of the first Ocean Race Atlantic. Behind them, the rest of the fleet spent the afternoon still fighting it out for the podium, a fitting end to a race that refused to settle until the very last mile.
