Of the 24 male and female IMOCA sailors taking part in the Ocean Race Atlantic - which starts from New York bound for Lorient on Tuesday - none has quite the involvement in this event to match that of Justine Mettraux.

The 39-year-old Swiss racer, who was the first woman to finish the last Vendée Globe, will sail this race as part of the Team Malizia crew with whom she has raced many times in the past. 

Her old boat - formerly Teamwork-Team SNEF - is doing the race in the hands of her fellow Swiss countryman, Ollie Heer, under its new name Embrace the Challenge.  

And, most remarkably, Mettraux’s older sister, Elodie-Jane Mettraux, is also taking part in the race - sailing with Francesca Clapcich’s crew on 11th Hour Racing. This is a historic first, making the Mettraux sisters the first siblings to race against each other in the IMOCA Class.  

Justine and Elodie-Jane come from a remarkable Swiss sailing family of five siblings who learnt their sailing skills on Lake Geneva and all of whom are now involved in the sport at a high level. Elodie-Jane has taken part in two Ocean Race campaigns and is an accomplished match racer and multihull sailor, and Justine loves the fact that they are racing together in the Ocean Race Atlantic.

“For sure it is really cool for both of us to be here,” she said, speaking at The Ocean Race Atlantic race village in New York. “I mean there are not a lot of spots for sailors on these boats and yeah, I am really proud that we are here together on this race and being able to sail at that level.”

Mettraux also said she hopes her sister will do more in IMOCA in the coming months and years. “I know she is happy to sail this race with Francesca (Clapcich). They know each other really well - they sailed together on Turn the Tide on Plastic (in the 20178-’18 Volvo Ocean Race) and on other projects. I think it depends on what Elodie really wants to do later on, but I think for sure she would be interested to do a few legs of the Ocean Race, if not everything. But sure, it’s cool to see her here,” she said.  

The other fascinating detail about Mettraux and this race is that the brand new DMG Mori Global One, which is making its debut in The Ocean Race Atlantic, is the latest boat from the board of French naval architect Guillaume Verdier who has also designed Mettraux’s new boat. This is currently being built in Brittany and is due to be launched next spring. 

© © Marie Lefloch I Team Malizia

Both of these new Verdier hulls feature a bustle running the full length of the hull - a new feature in IMOCA design - and there can be no doubt that Mettraux will be keeping a close eye on DMG Mori to see how the boat performs on its way across the Atlantic. She will also - no doubt - watch carefully to see how the boat she is sailing - the brand new Malizia 4 designed by Antoine Koch - fares against DMG Mori.

“We know that DMG Mori is a boat that is pretty different to the others, so maybe it’s going to take a bit more time for the DMG Mori crew to understand how to get it to work than a more classic boat. But, for sure, it’s going to be interesting to see this first race between these boats,”said Mettraux.

We asked her for her first impressions of Malizia 4 from the delivery voyage across the Atlantic for the race start. She was reluctant to go into too much detail, but was clearly impressed with Boris Herrmann’s new boat for the next Ocean Race and Vendée Globe.

“I think, for sure, the boat seems to be well-born and seems to be really agile in all different conditions and seems to take off early,” she said. “We have seen that quite quickly in our training - the boat seems like it’s pretty reliable as well, straight away.

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“But still, we can see it’s quite new,”Mettraux added, “because we had some little technical issues on the way here where we couldn’t really test the boat and didn’t push the boat as hard as we would have liked. But that is part of the game with a new boat.”

And what about lining it up with DMG Mori for the first time? “For sure it’s going to be interesting to see when there hasn’t been a confrontation (between the two boats) yet. So yeah, it will be really interesting because we know both boats have different strengths, so it will depend a bit on the weather we have on the way to Lorient,” she said.

Finally, what about the Swiss presence in this race? Three sailors out of 24 is not a bad showing for a landlocked mountainous nation? “It is good to see so many Swiss sailors,”agreed Mettraux. “We know that, even if we are from a small country, we are quite a big sailing country - on the Vendée Globe I think we were one of the nations who were most represented with the UK, after France. So yeah, it is just nice for me to see Ollie (Heer) on my ex-boat, and that he can continue his campaign and I hope that it is going to be fine for him…”

Ed Gorman