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<\/p>\nRichard Brisius doesn\u2019t dress it up. The co-owner and race chairman of the Ocean Race was briefly in Auckland to celebrate the confirmation of the 2027 stopover, and Boating New Zealand grabbed a few minutes with him on the day. He said exactly what he thinks about the state of Kiwi offshore racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cKiwis were the kings of the ocean,\u201d he said. \u201cKings of round the world racing. Not anymore. And I think it\u2019s time to start to build back into that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was 21 the first time he raced into Auckland, battered by the Southern Ocean, cold and spent, when the temperature began to lift somewhere north of the Hauraki Gulf. \u201cSuddenly, out of the ocean, you see the city of New Zealand. Coming into the rocky gulf, and fortunately, the oasis of Auckland is there. It\u2019s so personal, and you feel very, very welcome. And the fans are genuinely knowledgeable.\u201d He has been back many times since, first as a sailor, then as team manager, now as owner.<\/p>\n
In 2018, when The Ocean Race bought the event, then known as the Volvo Ocean Race, Brisius and his partners set about changing three things. They anchored the event to ocean science, with every competing boat now carrying instruments that collect oceanographic data continuously, sampling from two metres below the surface in stretches of water that research vessels rarely reach. They built a calendar around the flagship around-the-world edition, adding the Ocean Race Europe and the Ocean Race Atlantic to give teams more racing and more time to develop. And they overhauled the media technology, shifting to a new generation of low-orbit satellites that made real-time content from aboard the boats possible for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have developed the in-house technology system to capture what\u2019s going on in the boats in real-time,\u201d Brisius said. \u201cThere are cameras, there are microphones.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The opening leg from Alicante to Auckland, 14,000 nautical miles, is the longest single stage in the race\u2019s history. \u201cWe said, let\u2019s make this harder than we started. If you make it through that, you make it through.\u201d The route runs out of the Mediterranean, past Gibraltar, across the North Atlantic, down the South Atlantic, through the Southern Ocean and up to New Zealand. For anyone going into the Southern Ocean for the first time, he\u2019s matter-of-fact. \u201cIf you have never been in the Southern Ocean and you go down there the first time, you don\u2019t really know what to expect.\u201d Solo racing, he said, produces more conservative boat handling. \u201cTypically, the ones who\u2019ve done the Ocean Race are probably better in the Vend\u00e9e Globe, because they\u2019ve learned where the limits of the boats are.\u201d<\/p>\n
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When the fleet arrives in Auckland about the 20 February, the Ocean Live Park opens the same day on the Viaduct waterfront, free to enter and running for three weeks through to the Grand Departure on 14 March. Auckland organisers put the 2018 attendance at half a million people. \u201cYou can come and go and watch the boats, learn about the ocean, try the cockpit simulators, get close to the boats on the docks, meet the sailors, have a beer. It\u2019s just good times.\u201d<\/p>\n
The best Kiwi offshore sailors are out there, he said, doing the job on the world\u2019s best boats as hired crew. But leading their own campaigns is a different matter. \u201cThere\u2019s no nationality with the culture, the values, the Kiwi mentality that is a better match for racing on the high seas. And now the question is: do we want to be that ocean nation?\u201d<\/p>\n
Conrad Colman gets a mention by name. He is building his Aotearoa Ocean Racing campaign and will lead a Kiwi crew in the Ocean Race Atlantic later this year. \u201cConrad is passionate, he\u2019s driving very hard, he has this dream and he wants to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
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