Chapter 5

The Life and Loss of Alain Colas and his
Trimaran Manureva (1978)

Alain Colas gives a victory sign on board the largest sailing vessel ever to be sailed single handed, Club Mediterranee

Alain Colas was born in Clamercy, near Nevers in Burgundy, on 16 September 1943. Being born in the centre of France, he had no opportunity to learn to sail but he became a keen canoeist on the local rivers and canals. He studied English and French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and, at the age of 22, left France to go to Australia. His father had shown Alain an advertisement from Sydney University seeking a French lecturer. Alain had no qualifications for such a post but, not properly understanding the language and thinking it merely meant a teaching assistant, applied for the post. Ignoring a letter of refusal, he set off on a freighter for Sydney. Once there Alain used all his powers of persuasion to get the college to accept him. The University eventually relented and appointed him to a French teaching post at St John’s College.

In Sydney, Alain took up sailing and discovered a love for it. He crewed on yachts taking part in some of Australia’s longest ocean races. In 1968 he shipped as cook on board the yacht Kahurangui in that year’s Sydney Hobart Race, in which race Eric Tabarly was taking part with his Pen Duick III. Colas went on board before the race and met Tabarly for the first time. After the race Colas heard that Tabarly and his crew were proposing to take Pen Duick III on a cruise to New Caledonia and he asked if he could come along as cook. Tabarly, after asking who this guy was and not having a cook, agreed. Alain quickly became one of Tabarly’s closest disciples and probably the most famous of his many protégées, learning everything he knew from ‘the master’.

After this trip, the call of the sea became too great and Colas left his post at the university to join Tabarly for good. He sailed with Tabarly back to France and helped with the building and preparation of the trimaran Pen Duick IV, in which Tabarly proposed to enter the 1968 OSTAR.

Colas spent 1968 and 1969 sailing with Tabarly on Pen Duick III and Pen Duick IV, during which time he learnt his seamanship. In 1969 he was part of the crew of Pen Duick IV when she crossed the Atlantic in a record time of ten and a half days. They then traversed the Panama Canal and sailed up the west coast of North America to Los Angeles. There they entered and won a race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, outstripping all the opposition.

In Honolulu, Tabarly hoisted a large ‘for sale’ sign on Pen Duick IV but finding no buyer went on to Tahiti and then to New Caledonia. Alain had, by now, become enamoured with the trimaran and the Pacific and wrote ‘sailing the Pacific is the stuff of which dreams are made.’ He set about raising the money to buy Pen Duick IV and took a quick trip back to France but with little success. Undaunted, Colas used his Australian savings as a down payment and, with the aid of a bank loan, raised enough to pay Tabarly the 225,000 Francs (about $45,000) that he wanted for the boat. Thus the famous partnership of a man and his boat was formed.

Alain immediately sailed to Tahiti, which to him was close to paradise. There he met Teura who was to become his lifelong friend, companion and ultimately wife, bearing him three children. Teura agreed to sail back to Europe with him. But on the first leg of the voyage from Tahiti to Mauritius, she was too seasick to continue and flew back to France. Colas decided to sail Pen Duick IV alone and non-stop back to France via the Cape of Good Hope. He reached La Trinité-sur-Mer in February 1972 after 66 days at sea: then a record for a solo voyage – averaging 150 miles a day over a distance of 10,000 miles.

By the beginning of June, Alain was in Plymouth with Pen Duick IV ready for the OSTAR starting on 17 June. He was there along with Tom Follett in Three Cheers and Mike McMullen in Binkie II. All eyes however were on the huge 128-foot Vendredi Treize, owned by film director Claude Lelouch, and to be sailed by Jean Yves Terlain, another of Tabarly’s protégées. The boat had been designed by the American designer, Dick Carter, and had the simplest possible rig of just three boomed self-tacking staysails, each on their own mast. Everyone was amazed that one man could handle such a beast but Terlain was convinced he could win the race in a time of under 20 days. No one really realised that Alain was a potential race winner, fully prepared and ready in his strange looking spidery trimaran. It was the largest multihull in the race but looked bruised and battered from its recent voyage from Tahiti.

Light weather predominated for most of the race. Colas reached Newport first in a record time of twenty days, beating Vendredi Treize, which arrived a day later in second place. This was the first appearance in Europe of the trimaran Three Cheers, which came in fifth in a time of 27 days.

During the race Alain had the almost unheard of experience of crossing tacks with Vendredi Treize in mid ocean and overtaking her. He knew then that he would win the race, which he later described as the most beautiful moment of his life. As a result of the ensuing publicity, Alain was able to repay his debts. Now growing in confidence, he was rapidly becoming a favourite of the French media. With his Gallic charm, long black hair and exuberant sideburns he was every inch the sailing rock star. He began to use his infectious smile and personality to good effect in his many TV and press interviews.

On his return to France, Alain announced that for his next project he would become the first person to circumnavigate the world alone in a multihull. Whilst multihulls had sailed around the world before with a crew, it was still not readily accepted that they were safe vessels for a single-handed circumnavigation. The first multihull circumnavigation had actually taken place in 1971, when the English couple, Rosie and Colin Swale with their daughter Eve, had sailed around the world via Cape Horn in a slow and heavy 30-foot Bobcat cruising catamaran called Anneliese.

Colas now made some major alterations to Pen Duick IV, which he had by now renamed Manureva: meaning ‘bird of passage’ in Tahitian. He said that he had to ‘Cape Horn-ize’ her, to transform her into a craft capable of sailing safely through the dangerous seas of the roaring forties and furious fifties. He added sponsons to the long thin bows of the three hulls to help prevent them from burying themselves when running fast in large seas. He added a fourth crossbeam near the bows to give added rigidity to the boat’s structure. He modified the rig, the self-steering system and the interior, adding radio equipment and distress radio beacons. He had the entire structure of the boat examined using ultrasonic and x-ray scans carried out by the French Atomic Energy Commission. These tests revealed a lot of corrosion to the aluminium structure. This was all repaired. Finally, he repainted the boat midnight blue and put an escape hatch in the bottom so he could get out in the event of a capsize.

Colas raised sponsorship from Radio Television Luxembourg, the drinks company Paul Ricard and the French bank Credit Agricole. Between them they put up enough money to pay for these works. When Manureva set off she was probably the best equipped vessel which had ever attempted such a voyage.

Colas and Manureva set off from St Malo on 8 September 1973. He had set himself a target to beat the record set by the Cutty Sark to reach Sydney in under 80 days. He planned a course to skirt the Canary Islands, Dakar and the Cape Verde Islands, then to cross the equator into the South Atlantic against the south eastern trade winds. Then round the Cape of Good Hope and through the roaring forties across the Indian Ocean and south of Australia to stop at Sydney.

Colas made it to Sydney in 79 days, arriving on 27 November. He had sailed a little over 14,600 miles at an average speed of 7.7 knots. It was a new solo record. On arrival he was met by Teura, his parents and many old friends.

He left for the return half of the voyage on 29 December, the same day as his mentor Eric Tabarly left Sydney in his Pen Duick VI on the next leg of the Whitbread Round the World Race which Colas was shadowing.

He had a rough ride across the Southern Ocean and suffered many breakages and gear failures. On 2 February he was met by the British Antarctic survey vessel, the Endurance, which escorted Manureva through the night as she neared Cape Horn. The next day, in calm conditions, an inflatable put off from the Endurance with spare fuel and some supplies.

Much to Colas’ disappointment, in almost perfect conditions with calm seas and an azure sky, Manureva rounded Cape Horn later that day. He expected, and perhaps longed for, a struggle with storms and high seas. He said later that he felt the good weather had reduced the whole thing to a charade.

Manureva and Colas arrived back in St Malo on 28 March 1974, 90 days out of Sydney. His voyage was a magnificent achievement and he received a hero’s welcome.

Manureva, with Alain Colas at the helm, at the start of the 1978 Route du Rhum race

After a short pause in France, Colas took Manureva to Plymouth for the 1974 Two Handed Round Britain and Ireland Race, which started on 6 July. He was up against fierce competition with the likes of Robin Knox-Johnston in his 70-foot catamaran British Oxygen, Phil Weld with his Newick-designed trimaran Gulf Streamer and, of course, Mike McMullen with Three Cheers.

Colas did not do well in this race and admitted afterwards that he had underestimated the competition. Manureva was grossly overweight as Colas had not had time to unload the heavy radio and other equipment and spare parts he had on board for the circumnavigation. He finished in fourth place, twenty-four hours after the winner. Colas returned to France and began preparations for his next project, which would come to be called his ‘magnificent mistake’.

The Royal Western Yacht Club, realising they had a huge, almost uncontrollable, success on their hands, made a number of rule changes for the next OSTAR due to start in 1976. Their first idea was to limit the size of yachts allowed to enter, but agreement could not be reached and, apart from dividing the fleet into three classes, they failed to impose any upper size limit. The rules were published late in 1972 and at first it seemed that the organisers would be swamped by the number of entries. Over 600 people applied.

Colas had in mind something for this race which would startle the world. To make sure he properly understood the rules, Colas telephoned the Royal Western Yacht Club to ask whether he was right and that there really was no upper size limit. Jack Odling-Smee, the race secretary, confirmed this was indeed the case and remarked, somewhat jocularly, that as long as Colas could get his boat into Millbay Dock in Plymouth for the scrutineering it would be all right. At that stage Odling-Smee had absolutely no idea what Alain had in mind and came to regret the remark.

In February 1975, someone sent Odling-Smee a press cutting from Nice Matin, a French daily newspaper, announcing plans for a boat to be called Manureva (actually it came to be named Club Mediterranee) to be sailed by Alain Colas in the 1976 OSTAR. The boat was to be a four masted schooner of an astonishing 236 feet overall length (almost double the length of the largest boat ever to have taken part in any previous OSTAR).

At first the race committee decided to turn down the vessel should such an entry be received and informed Colas of this. Colas then asked to appear before the committee to argue his case. They agreed to see him and Colas told them that the boat was to be fitted with a number of electronic devices to give warnings of ships and icebergs and he emphasised that no sail on the proposed boat was larger than the sails he had handled on his solo circumnavigation in Manureva. The committee was swayed by Colas and eventually voted by a majority to allow his entry. They really had no alternative, their own rules not having imposed any upper size limit. The committee received a lot of criticism from the British press and elsewhere for allowing what was considered to be an absurdly large boat to sail across the Atlantic with only one man on board. The UK Department of Transport weighed in, worried about the number of boats allowed to enter, the size of some of these, their skippers’ inability to maintain a proper look out and the possibility of damage to other boats if in collision. A normal sized small yacht would come off worse in a collision with a merchant ship or a fishing boat. Not so in the case of Club Mediterranee, which could inflict considerable damage. Through all of this Alain was quietly getting on with his plans in France.

Somehow he raised sufficient funds to start work on the boat, which was to be built in the Naval dockyard at Toulon. The massive steel hull, the largest sailing yacht ever to have been built in France, was built upside down to plans drawn up by naval architect Michael Bigoin. The design was wind and tank tested in the French National Aeronautics Research Centre. The boat was to be fitted with state of the art electronics (which were all very primitive by today’s standards) and included a satellite positioning system, a computer and fax machines all powered by wind, solar and hydro generators. A closed circuit video system would allow Colas to monitor the sails from an enclosed bridge deck.

Then on 19 May 1975, before he had raised all of the money needed, Colas suffered a serious setback. Whilst attempting to anchor his old trimaran Manureva in La Trinité-sur-Mer, his right leg became trapped in the anchor cable whilst it was running out. His right foot was virtually severed at the ankle.

Colas was taken to hospital in Nantes where the doctors doubted if he would ever walk again. They wanted to amputate what was remaining of his foot. Colas refused to allow this. Eventually after a series of some twenty-two operations, many undertaken without anaesthetic at the behest of Colas who wanted to remain alert at all times, Colas recovered and was able to limp around the hospital. Nothing could stop Colas with his project and he continued to manage it from his hospital bed. He drafted in his brother, Jean Francis, who commuted between Nantes and the Toulon shipyard. He sold the rights of his story to the French press to raise more funds.

Even then, all he had was a bare hull and not enough money to buy the masts, sails, engines and equipment. However, his story came to the attention of the Club Mediterranee organisation who agreed to commit two thirds of its advertising budget to the project. This gave Colas enough money to finish the boat.

In July 1975 Colas wrote from his hospital bed to the OSTAR Race Committee saying ‘surgeons have done wonders and I shall join the party next June for the race to Newport.’ The committee were not so sure and met with Colas in February 1976, accompanied by his doctor who was himself a yachtsman. Colas hobbled into the meeting room and his doctor said afterwards that for all the good the foot did him he might as well have done without it. However, Colas managed to sway the committee, who agreed he could enter provided he undertook an additional single handed qualifying cruise of 1,500 miles between not more than four points in the North Atlantic. Everyone else had to do only a single 500 mile qualifying cruise – Colas had to do that as well. This whole provision angered Colas but he agreed to it, even though it gave him little time, along with all the other preparations needed, before the race in June.

Eventually the monster yacht was launched, fitted out and made ready to sail. Colas undertook the solo 1,500-mile qualifier (and the 500-mile one) and then, with a large crew on board, set sail for Plymouth.

Moored up in Millbay Dock, Club Mediterranee dwarfed everything else in sight and was the centre of attention. David Palmer, then news editor of the Financial Times, who was also taking part in the OSTAR in his salmon pink Kelsall trimaran FT, brilliantly described the atmosphere on board the monster boat:

The boat was alive with women – sensuous French girls with shining faces, pouting mouths and long lissom figures. I went on board one evening to see Colas, and wandered below deck to find a great cavern of a boat with no fittings of any kind – she felt like the inside of an empty cross-Channel car ferry. There was a young man in front of a stove, officially cooking a meal, at this moment in a clinch with his assistant. There were what seemed like two dozen girls sitting next to hammocks strung up between the steel bulkheads. I don’t know who they were or what they were doing, but they seemed to belong on board, and as Colas came limping up to them they all chanted in unison: “Bonsoir Alain,” and he, like a feudal baron acknowledging the tributes of his retainers replied: “Bonsoir mesdemoiselles.” Back in the wheelhouse, bedlam. A French couple were going at each other hammer and tongs in high-decibel French over which of them was responsible for disciplining their thoroughly undisciplined child.

Colas was, at first, his usual friendly self, limping around the boat with his useless foot, showing off his creation to visiting guests. But all this bonhomie soon disappeared as the pressures on him became too great. The race committee were out of their depth with Colas’ monster and drafted in experts from the Royal Navy to look at the boat’s computerised navigation and other systems. It was clear that some of these were not allowed by the rules and the committee informed Colas that he would have to disable some of the computer’s functions to make them inoperable. This was too much for Colas who, at a bad tempered press conference, bitterly abused the committee not only about this but also about making him undergo the extra qualifying trip.

David Palmer wrote: ‘And now here he was in Plymouth, walking on a foot that had no right to be there, about to sail a boat no one wanted to win, knowing that for him to finish second would be a terrible defeat. Quite suddenly, charming, kind, helpful Alain Colas blew a fuse...This was not to be Colas’ year and perhaps he sensed it.’

None of this augured well for the race. On top of this, his old mentor and friend Eric Tabarly in his much travelled Pen Duick VI was heavily tipped as the likely winner. Colas’ sponsors, who had invested heavily in the project, were expecting him to win and were not pleased at what was going on in Plymouth.

Things did not turn out well for Club Mediterranee or for Colas. The race was run in very heavy weather and the fleet was battered by severe gale after severe gale, with many boats retiring. During the first gale Colas suffered sail and halyard damage but continued. After the second gale he could no longer set the sails to properly balance the boat. He started out with five halyards on each of his four masts but now had only a few left. Colas decided to put into St John’s in Newfoundland to reeve new halyards and repair his sails.

Unbeknown to Colas, at the time he turned for land he had been leading Tabarly by some 300 miles and he could have gone on to win.

As a result of this diversion to St John’s, Colas arrived in Newport in second place, seven and a half hours behind Tabarly. Worse was to follow. Someone had spotted that Colas had helpers on board Club Mediterranee as he left St John’s. They hoisted his sails and then disembarked at sea. The race rules clearly prohibited this. They stipulated that people may come on board only when the boat is actually moored or anchored. For this infringement Colas was awarded a penalty of 58 hours (10% of his elapsed time). This dropped his position to fifth.

Clearly 1976 was not Alain’s year and was something from which he never really recovered. Club Mediterranee was sold and converted into a luxury sailing cruise ship. Renamed Phocea she is still sailing today and can accommodate up to 20 passengers in great luxury.

To get back into the mainstream, Colas decided to enter the inaugural Route de Rhum single handed race from St Malo to Guadeloupe, to be held in 1978. This was to be a big, heavily promoted and publicised French jamboree, entered by all the top French ‘rock star’ sailors. Alain would have liked to have built himself a new boat for this prestigious race but the Club Mediterranee experience made sponsors shun him. Colas was not in favour. He abandoned plans for a new boat and got his old well-travelled mount Manureva back into commission. He would do the race in her instead.

There were 36 entrants for the Route de Rhum. These included his former sailing companion Olivier de Kersauson and most of the famous names in solo sailing. When Colas arrived at St Malo people commented on the fact that Manureva looked worn and tired. She was by now an old boat which had travelled many thousands of miles, including two circumnavigations and several Atlantic crossings. There was visible corrosion in her multiple aluminium cross beams and the aluminium hull plating was battered and bent. This entry was a distinct come down from the hullabaloo surrounding his Club Mediterranee days.

The race started from St Malo on 5 November 1978 and the fleet soon disappeared over the horizon. In those days there were no tracking devices and no requirements to report one’s position as there are today. Few carried long distance radios and no one knew where the fleet was or who was winning until the boats appeared over the horizon at the finish.

Colas, however, did have his long range radio on board Manureva and he regularly reported his position. On 16 November 1978, eleven days out, he sent a radio message saying he was passing the Azores, that everything on board was alright and that he was sailing well. He did not give any detailed position and this turned out to be his last message.

After that nothing further was heard from him and neither his boat, nor his body, nor any wreckage has ever been found.

It is likely that Manureva suffered structural damage either from bad weather (or maybe just from corrosion) or as a result of a collision, when she broke up and sank. What must be appreciated is that Manureva was very different from today’s multihulls which have fully buoyant floats and cross beams. The advantage most often claimed by multihull supporters is that, whilst they can capsize or suffer structural failure, they are unsinkable and will provide a safe rescue platform even when inverted. Manureva, however, was not like that. Her floats were designed to be submersible when the boat was hard pressed under sail and her aluminium beams gave no floatation support. Thus if the cross beams broke or a float was holed and the boat capsized she would, in all probability, sink.

Alain Colas will always be remembered for his ill-fated monster but he should really be remembered as a superb seaman who undertook several outstanding voyages, wrote some exceptional books and was an inspiration to a whole generation of young sailors, both in France and elsewhere.