1979. Farewell Colas, swallowed by the sea

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

Farewell Colas, swallowed by the sea

Taken from the 1979 Journal of Sailing, Year 5, No. 1, February/March, pp. 10/13.

One of the greatest sailors in history, Alain Colas, disappears during the Route Du Rhum. He had set off without a sponsor in a 20-meter trimaran, alone in the hunt for the winner’s prize that would put his finances back on track.

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Adieu Colas!

Search suspended, Colas is officially missing. Only a miracle can find him alive. The sea has swallowed one of its heroes. Is it a cruel law or an absurd commitment? We do not want to answer, only remember.

Alain Colas ran the “Route to Rhum” for the thirty million first prize. Indebted up to his neck for his “Manureva,” bought by Tabarly, crushed by the promotional cunning of his former friend and rival, distressed by an accident that had ruined his foot, straining to regain his role as France’s top sailor, he gambled everything on this race, even his life. And he lost.

One man, one boat, one sea

The vast Ocean he wanted to rule, he took it. And we, people of the sea, here on land, imagine with anguish his shipwreck, his desperate struggle, we reconstruct, with horror, what was his agony. But we do not hate the sea. That treacherous sea that defeated another one of us. A sea that does not allow challenges beyond a certain limit, that always wants to win and is so strong that it can do so at any time at its will. Beautiful, splendid in its sunny days and cool winds, horrible and merciless in its rages. A sea that must be respected and that Colas did not respect in his challenge and could not respect without running the risk of being declared permanently beaten.

Alain’s story is that of many men who must, at all costs, have adversaries every day and who cannot afford to go out defeated. Colas lived by this challenge, but friends know he did not love it. He could have stayed home with his beautiful Tahitian wife and children. Sadly, he no longer dreamed of an island to stay forever like Moitessier, but of a bourgeois home, perhaps a desk with his beautiful half-sleeves. But who offers a Colas a quiet place? The bad thing is that if he does not win there is no one to offer him anything. For the “Route of Rhum” he left with no sponsors, a contract with radio Monte Carlo and nothing more. He had to win that 30 million. He could not not win. He perhaps “pulled” beyond what was due and the sea broke him. He was a loner by necessity, not by vocation, in an absurd trade that was nonetheless the only one he knew how to do well.

A man condemned to lose, sooner or later, like all those, especially loners, who use sailing to survive. The last defeat, the tragic one, does not even bring them glory. Everyone is in a hurry to forget, because these are the “black pages” they don’t like. Yesterday still in Equipe, the newspaper that organized the regatta there were a few lines, a week ago there was a big headline, today there is nothing. Someday if the wreck of Manureva, unsinkable multihull, is found it will be game to talk about it. But reluctantly. Then, silence. Other heroes of a day, of a month, of a year wait. And the sea has always been like this, over the centuries, an immense cemetery. Colas, one more in the depths.

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A youthful dream come true

Francois, Renè and Alain are, this is 1964, at the University of Dijon, three inseparable friends. The first two are studying medicine and the third literature. With friendship they have in common the same somewhat crazy, perhaps childish desire, kept anyway, almost out of modesty, hidden. They want to go around the world. Ten years later Francois Landrin and Renè Begue have become two doctors, and Alain Colas, the other fellow student, instead realizes the dream of his youth. He is a navigator and has the chance to go around the world. Dream come true.

Alain Colas was born on September 16 in Clamecy to a family of antiquarians from Nièvre. In 1966, after his studies he goes to Sydney, where he gives lectures at the University as a “Lecturer wanted.” It is here that, from Australian friends, he is infected with a passion for sailing. In 1968 he returned to France and with Eric Tabarly – he met him in May 1967 at the Sydney-Hobart in which Tabary participated – took part in the trials of the trimaran Pen Duick IV. It is between 1968 and 1970 that together with master Tabarly, for Alain is the great initiator to Ocenic sailing. undertakes a partial round-the-world voyage, alternating it with regattas, records, cruises. He buys from Eric Tabarly, going into debt up to his neck, Pen Duick IV and sails in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, completing, in 1972, his round-the-world voyage with a sixty-six-day nonstop solo voyage.

In the meantime, he has fine-tuned Pen Duick IV, which is able to perform at maximum performance and be able to compete in the big races. In 1972 he is at the start of the Ostar. Although he is a well-known sailor, the big favorite is his compatriot Terlain, racing in a newly designed boat: the Vendredì 13, sponsored by the famous film director Claude Lelouch. Both, Terlain and Colas, choose for the navigation between Plymouth and Newport the orthodromic route, but it is Colas with his boat who crosses the finish line first with a record time of 20 days, 13 hours and 15 minutes beating all previous records. In fact, he takes a full six days less than the 1968 winner, Geoffres Williams. who had already accomplished an outstanding feat.

Pen Duick IV is renamed Manureva–a Polynesian name chosen by a man who left his heart in Polynesia–and Alain Colas attempts a feat that will go down in the history of solitaires. To sail around the world from St. Malo to Sydney via Cape Horn. He set out on September 8, 1972 and took 79 days to complete the first leg and 90 days to complete the second. When he arrived in St. Malo at 12:45 p.m. on Thursday, March 28, 1973, he broke the record set by Chichester, who had taken a total of 226 days to sail solo around the world.

“Ne parlons pas de record battu sur Chichester,” Colas says modestly. il n’avait pas le méme bateau et surtout pas la méme àge que moi. Son exploit m’a étè un point de repére plutòt qu’un temps à améliorer. En revanche je suis bougrement content d’avoir le record du “Cutty Sark”. Du temps de la route aux épices, ce grand trois-màts avait obtenu le ruban bleu de la traverse Europe-Australia. Mais il mesurait 64,7 m et il fallait 45 hommes pour le maneuver et l’armener à bon port “. The rest is modern-day history.

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