Alain Colas(1943 — 1978)
Alain Colas
France
6 min read
Alain Colas (1943-1978) was a French sailor and a leading figure in the early days of solo offshore racing. Winner of the English Transat in 1972, he disappeared at sea in 1978 during the first Route du Rhum aboard his trimaran Manureva.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1943 in Clamecy (Nièvre).
- Won the solo English Transat (OSTAR) in 1972 aboard Pen Duick IV.
- Completed a solo round-the-world voyage in 1973-1974 on his trimaran, which he renamed Manureva.
- Designed and skippered the Club Méditerranée in 1976, a colossal 72-metre monohull, during the Transat.
- Disappeared at sea in the Atlantic in November 1978 during the first Route du Rhum.
Works & Achievements
Colas's first major victory: he crossed the Atlantic single-handed from Plymouth to Newport in about twenty days and became a figure of French sailing.
A circumnavigation with a single stopover in Sydney, covering some 30,000 miles, beating the time set by Francis Chichester.
A 72-metre, four-masted sailboat designed for the OSTAR; Colas took 2nd place aboard her behind Tabarly, pushing the limits of giant-scale offshore racing.
An account in which Colas recounts his solo voyage and the rounding of the great capes, a landmark testimony to the ocean adventures of the 1970s.
Racing aboard Manureva in this inaugural Saint-Malo–Guadeloupe event, Colas vanished, forever marking the history of the race.
Anecdotes
Alain Colas did not have his most famous trimaran built: he bought it from Éric Tabarly. It was *Pen Duick IV*, which he renamed *Manureva*, a Tahitian word meaning "bird of passage." Colas, married to a young Tahitian woman named Teura, was deeply attached to Polynesia.
In 1972, Colas won the **OSTAR**, the famous solo English transatlantic race from **Plymouth** (England) to **Newport** (United States), aboard *Manureva*. The first Frenchman to win this legendary race after Tabarly, he suddenly became a national hero — he who had set off to teach French in Australia just a few years earlier.
In **1975**, while his boat was moored, Colas's right foot was caught and crushed by a mooring line. He underwent around twenty operations, and the doctors considered amputation. He refused, and trained to haul himself up his mast using arm strength alone so he could return to the sea.
For the **1976** transatlantic race, Colas had a giant sailing vessel built, *Club Méditerranée*: a 72-metre-long monohull rigged with four masts, so large that a single man could barely handle it. Despite a penalty for an unscheduled stopover, he finished second, behind his old rival **Éric Tabarly**.
Colas vanished at sea in **November 1978** aboard *Manureva*, during the very first **Route du Rhum**. The following year, the song *Manureva*, sung by **Alain Chamfort** to lyrics by **Serge Gainsbourg**, paid tribute to him: all of France took to humming the name of his lost boat, often without knowing it referred to a sailor who had disappeared.
Primary Sources
Autobiographical account in which Colas recounts his solo voyage around the world aboard Manureva, the rounding of the great capes and the ordeal of solitude, where the sea becomes the only horizon for months on end.
Alain Colas is recorded as the winner of the 1972 edition, after a solo crossing from Plymouth to Newport completed in about twenty days aboard the trimaran Pen Duick IV (Manureva).
Off the Azores, Colas radioed that a violent storm was bearing down on Manureva; contact was then lost, around 16 November 1978, and the boat would never reappear.
Key Places
Small town in Burgundy where Alain Colas was born in 1943, far from the sea.
Starting port of the OSTAR, the English single-handed transatlantic race that Colas won in 1972.
Finishing port of the English transatlantic race, where Colas crossed the line as the winner in 1972.
Home port and starting point of his round-the-world voyage and then of the first Route du Rhum in 1978.
Polynesia, to which Colas was deeply attached; there he married Teura and drew the name “Manureva”.
Ocean area where Manureva was caught in a storm and where Colas disappeared in November 1978.
