High stakes Route du Rhum for New Zealand's Conrad Colman

by Oliver Dewar on 1 Oct 2010 Global Ocean Race 2011-12 update.

In 2009, Conrad Colman’s first taste of solo offshore sailing was a Mini 6.50 campaign, but the 26 year-old Kiwi soon identified the Global Ocean Race 2011-12 (GOR) as an opportunity to fulfil his dream of racing around the world. Colman officially entered the GOR last autumn and will be competing in the 2010 Route du Rhum La Banque Postale at the end of October on his chartered Class40, 40 Degrees.

Colman’s bold strategy was to find a Class40 and start racing while hunting for sponsorship. It’s a high-stress environment and a risky approach, but the Kiwi round the world campaign is gathering momentum. 'I was planning on continuing my Mini sailing and sharing an apartment in Lorient with other Mini sailors with the intention of completing the 2010 Mini season,' he recalls. 'The goal was to do the Azores Race from Les Sables d’Olonne.' His first year in Mini 6.50s was highly promising with top results and 24th place out of 46 finishers in the transatlantic Charente Maritime-Bahia Race despite severe equipment failure.

However, the GOR proved compelling and Colman contacted Peter Harding, owner of the Owen Clarke/Jaz Marine Class40, 40 Degrees. 'Peter and I agreed on the charter for the GOR and he told me that the boat was available for charter immediately,' Colman explains. 'Peter then suggested that I take the boat for the Route du Rhum, at which point my head exploded!' Without hesitation, the Mini 6.50 campaign was dropped, his Mini was put on the market and Colman set off for the Class40 World Championships in Gijon, Spain, in July sailing 40 Degrees with the yacht’s core crew of Harding, Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron.

Wasting no time, Colman set off on his Route du Rhum qualifier, a single-handed 1,000 mile voyage immediately following the Class40 World’s, sailing west from Gijon into the Atlantic for some high-octane downwind sailing. 'I ducked round the corner to Finisterre and had 35 knots continually, which was pretty interesting and a good introduction to the boat,' he says. As 40 Degrees sailed south along the coast of Portugal, Colman experienced the benefits of the additional 19 feet on a Class40 compared to a Mini 6.50: 'I’d been in similar conditions during the Mini Transat and it was interesting to compare and contrast this with a bigger boat,' he explains. 'The contrast was astonishing. I approached the coast with 25 knots and one reef, with the medium spinnaker, thinking I was taking it easy,' Colman continues. 'I kept this sail configuration through to 35 knots and in comparison to the Mini, it was just amazing. It was so easy to sail and so stable. The boat doesn’t fall over, it just goes faster and faster!'

However, the fast ride south had to end: 'I turned around and then beat back up into 35 knots to Fastnet Rock, 500 miles upwind,' he says. 'Unlike a Mini, I could stand upright and it didn’t feel as though I was living in a bathtub, which is a vast improvement!' After rounding Fastnet Rock, Colman headed for Wolf Rock off Land’s End, then across the Channel into the Bay of Biscay and his home base in Lorient. 'In total, my Rhum qualifier was 1,500 miles, which is more than was required by the rules, but there really wasn’t going to be a better chance to test the boat solo and I took advantage of it,' he adds. Since the qualifying passage, Colman raced the yacht in the Happy Baie! regatta in La Trinité-sur-Mer taking third place on 40 Degrees and gaining further, valuable Class40 experience from one of his crew, Boris Herrmann, overall winner of the Portimão Global Ocean Race 2008-09 (the first edition of the GOR) and skipper of IMOCA Open 60 Neutrogena Norwegian Formula in the forthcoming Barcelona World Race.

On Sunday 31 October, Conrad Colman and 40 Degrees will cross the Route du Rhum start line in Saint-Malo, France, as part of a fleet of 83 boats racing single-handed across the North Atlantic to Pointe à Pitre, Guadaloupe, in the Caribbean. Colman will be skippering one of the 44 Class40s entered in the race – a record number of Class40s with 23 more entries than the 2006 Route du Rhum – including two fellow GOR entries; Jean-Edouard Criquioche on Groupe Picoty and Marco Nannini on UniCredit. For the un-sponsored, Kiwi sailor, the racing campaign has inherent risks: 'I’ve chartered the boat with a loan so I’m essentially gambling that I can find a sponsor for the Rhum and the GOR and pay it back,' Colman confirms. 'It is a high stakes game and fairly stressful,' he admits. 'I’m counting every penny and don’t have the funds to change anything on the boat. For example, the sails are little bit tired,' he says of the one year-old 40 Degrees. However, Colman is confident and pragmatic: 'This is my choice and I have no other shot at it,' he admits. 'It’s a big Kiwi thing to make do with what you have.'

Colman and 40 Degrees will leave Lorient for Saint-Malo on 17 October for final pre-Route du Rhum preparation: a process that will be made far easier with the help of his GOR co-skipper, 32 year-old American, Ryan Finn; a fellow Mini 6.50 sailor. 'We’re very aware that we’re a team from here on out,' says Colman. 'While I’m shouldering the cost of the Rhum and putting my feet in the fire by taking on the financial risk, starting our GOR campaign now is going to be an enormous advantage.' A feature that will accelerate Colman and Finn’s sponsorship search is current media interest in the duo in New Zealand and the USA. Most recently, Outside Magazine – America’s most popular adventure and outdoor activity publication – has identified a compelling story and signed the duo for a TV documentary series covering their offshore racing campaign. 'We are two international guys that come to sailing from two very different backgrounds and from opposite corners of the world,' Colman explains. 'We’ve come to France to be the best ocean racers we can and have been brought together through sailing.'

While both sailors share a common purpose, their path to round the world racing is contrasting. Offshore sailing is part of Colman’s DNA: his American father sailed from the US to New Zealand, married in New Zealand and set off on a round the world voyage with his bride. Indeed, Colman’s first cruise was undertaken in the Java Sea with his parents at just three weeks-old. Meanwhile, Finn developed a passion for offshore sailing during a severe illness. Colman explains: 'Ryan has had an amazing personal struggle in overcoming cancer and came through it with the motivation of wanting to race around the world one day. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of offshore racing events.'

With under a month remaining until the Route du Rhum start, Colman and Finn continue to prepare, plan and search for funding. Despite this narrow window of opportunity, Colman is upbeat: 'I remember another Conrad signing title sponsorship just eight weeks before the start of his race,' says Colman, referring to British solo sailor, Conrad Humphries, and his Motorola campaign in the 2004-05 Vendée Globe. 'You just have to keep at it and we’re fighting our corners in New Zealand, the US and France.'

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