The first edition of The Ocean Race Atlantic will be remembered for the brutal conditions during the first five days of a race which has seen the brand new Malizia 4 dominate early on before surrendering the lead to 11th Hour Racing.

© Julien Champolion / polaRYSE / 11th Hour Racing / The Ocean Race© Julien Champolion / polaRYSE / 11th Hour Racing / The Ocean Race

The 3,200-nautical mile transatlantic sprint, which started from a virtual line 120 miles off the New York coast and finishes at Lorient, is now entering its second phase with 1,240 miles to sail for the leading boats (follow the race on the race tracker). The strong winds and big seas associated with a classic Atlantic depression are being replaced with more complex and lighter winds as the leaders tackle a ridge which will dominate towards the finish.

This morning Francesca Clapcich and her crew on 11th Hour Racing are still ahead, as they have been for the last two days, but only just. Paul Meilhat and his team on United by the Ocean have caught up to them in the lighter winds, cutting the deficit from nearly 30 miles to just over a mile. 

On the tracker, these two boats are right on top of each other with the new Guillaume Verdier-designed DMG Mori Global One closing the gap on both of them, just over 20 miles behind. Team Malizia, skippered by Boris Herrmann, which has damage to a foil casing after a collision, is also still benefitting from the stronger winds and was 50 miles behind the leader but travelling six knots faster. 

While these four boats are in the battle for the win, there is a big gap of some 300 miles to Oliver Heer’s Embrace the Challenge which has been hobbled by serious mainsail damage incurred while reefing in the storm. Behind them, meanwhile, Conrad Colman and his all-New Zealand crew on MSIG Europe, the only non-foiler in the six-strong fleet, is about 110 miles further back but perhaps sensing an opportunity to snatch fifth place.

© Anne Beaugé / DMG MORI Global One

After a brief lightwind section at the start, the race has been dominated by power-reaching in strong winds and increasingly rough sea conditions. Among those watching this battle between boats, and between boats and the elements, has been the current IMOCA Globe Series leader Sam Goodchild who won the season-opening 1000 Race and was second in the Vendée Arctique.

Sam Goodchild is a tough customer on the water, but even he has been impressed with how hard this race has been on people and boats. “What stands out for me watching from on land, is how relentless it looks and has been,” he told the Class. “It’s been non-stop strong winds and it’s been really intense.”

Goodchild knows this course, having sailed as part of the Holcim-PRB crew during the last Ocean Race when they set a new 24-hour distance record, but he says this crossing has been far worse. “It seems like they have had pretty difficult conditions compared to the norm,” he said. “It seems like very unstable wind in front of the weather front and a very nasty sea state by the sounds of it. During the transatlantic we did on Holcim we had flat water and amazing conditions.” 

Goodchild, who is awaiting a new boat in the colours of MACIF from the board of Guillaume Verdier which is being launched next spring, has been watching the performance of the two new boats in this fleet - Malizia 4 and DMG Mori Global One. He has been particularly impressed with Malizia 4, the latest design from Antoine Koch.

© Georgia Schofield / MSIG Europe / The Ocean Race

“Malizia has been very impressive since the boat splashed and it’s their second new boat. They have got a very organised team, they have been planning this for a long time and they’ve done an impressive job of hitting the ground running and dealing with the little issues they have had,” he said.

“They have one of the most experienced IMOCA teams in the fleet - with Justine Mettraux, Julien Villion and Cole Brauer sailing alongside Boris Herrmann - so to see them out front wasn’t a surprise. And they’ve got a boat that is an evolution of what we’ve already been sailing for the last five or six years, so they are not figuring out how to make it work. They know how to do that. In that situation you are looking at the details, but 95% of it is what you do already, so seeing them out front has not surprised me.”

Goodchild says there is no surprise either to see 11th Hour Racing at the sharp end of the fleet after Malizia had to drop back, with a crew led by Clapcich and Will Harris, who finished second in last year’s Transat Café L’Or together. As far as Paul Meilhat is concerned on United by the Ocean (the former Biotherm), the British skipper described him as a “metronome,” summing up his consistent competitive pace in consecutive races. 

When it comes to DMG Mori Global One, Goodchild said he is not yet sure about that boat’s performance potential. The crew led by Kojiro Shiraishi of Japan, that includes Nico Lunven and Sam Davies, started off the pace on their new Verdier design, that features a full-length bustle in the hull, but have gradually found their feet in this race and could yet contend for the win.

© Benjamin.Sellier -

“It’s an interesting boat,” said Goodchild. “It’s definitely pushing out there and it will be exciting to see how it goes. They were obviously pretty slow off the start going upwind. They are doing better now but they are not blowing people out of the water. Is that because the boat is not quick, or is it because the team isn’t ready to push it hard or what? It’s going to be interesting to follow…”

Now that speeds have fallen and the leaders have started to feel the effects of the ridge, Goodchild says survival mode will be replaced by full-on racing which might give us a better idea of the relative performance of the boats. 

“It’s not going to be a reach on starboard all the way to the finish,” he said, “so more things are going to happen. You might start to see more performance differences because to a certain measure, it’s been a little bit of survival mode  - ‘let’s go the same speed as the other boats and not try to break anything’ as opposed to ‘let’s go pedal-to-the-metal and see what happens.’ So it’s when the sea state starts dropping down and the wind drops, we might see a bit more difference in average performance.”

Ed Gorman 


FOLLOW THE RACE

Live updates via the daily OnBoard Live Show
Streaming from on board each boat via the official race tracker at www.theoceanrace.com