March 29, 2025 • 16 mins
Kiwi offshore sailor Conrad Colman is hoping to take on the Ocean Race.
He joined Piney to explain further.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport Podcast with Jason Fine
from Newstalk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Ocean Race, the world's toughest test of a team in sport,
is returning to Auckland in the twenty twenty seven edition
of the iconic Around the World Offshore Race, formerly known
as the Whitbread Round the World Race, the Volvo Ocean
Race last scene here in New Zealand in twenty eighteen.
Among those taking part will be key We Offshore sailor
and two times solo vond Globe racer Conrad Coleman, who
(00:36):
has announced his new team alt Oa Ocean Racing will
take on the challenge. Conrad Coleman's in studio with us.
Great to see you, mate, Thanks for stopping and tell
us about this project and your motivation for it.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Well, it's pretty epic because it's rare, as I'm forty
one now that we get to live out a childhood
dream and I grew up here in Auckland and every
couple of years then we had this epic Whitbread as
it was then fleet that came ripping in and out
of the harbor, typically with New Zealanders that were lifting
(01:09):
the trophy. You know, obviously Peter Blake, ground Dalton and
all of these legends, and as a schoolboy, this is
what got me excited. And I have now sort of
had a long and winding road, but it ultimately became
a professional ocean racing staler myself, but in a very
particular sector. You know, I moved to France to do
(01:32):
this solo ocean race, the Vonde Globe, and that is
completely completely unique. It's a professional ocean racing circuit based
around sailing solo either across Atlantic or indeed, as I've
just done two times around the world, and now the
ocean race as it is now called has adopted the
(01:52):
same fleet of boats that I have just become an
expert in sailing, and so I kind of feel like,
quite by accident, is that I've become sort of centrally
located in this fusion of these two worlds. What used
to be called the whipbread fully crued ocean racing coming
to New Zealand and what I've just completed, the non
stops all the race around the world.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So the boats then tell us about those are they
are they foiling boats?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yes? Absolutely so for around the world racing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So if you can imagine what we've had the chance
to see out on our harbor here recently with with
SALGP and of course the America's Cup foiling. They're foiler assisted,
so they don't completely fly or not at least in
a very stable manner, which is kind of problematic, end
(02:35):
up doing these sort of quite dramatic hop skips and
jumps and of course big splashdowns. But these are wild,
wild boats. You know, you could if you can make
the parallel to you know, Formula one is definitely the
America's Cup. You know, these are fragile beasts that you know,
gets shammy down at the end of their race. Everybody
goes home and sleeps in nice comfy beds at the
(02:56):
end of the day. This is not that you know.
What I do is if we go to a parallel
with the Motorsport World it is a World Championship rally,
and so that is gritty, it is brutal. It goes
all day all night, you know, up up over mountain passes,
and so it's the same kind of thing. You know,
(03:16):
we don't have a big, big, short crew. It's the
sailors that fix the boats. You have to be incredibly
multi talented, to be able to fix the boat and
get your hands stuck into the electronics, keep a very
complicated racing machine alive in some of the most treacherous
and dangerous places on our globe, so most notably the
Southern Ocean, where I was just a couple of months ago.
(03:38):
And so it's incredibly exciting and challenging because you know,
one day it's never liked the other. And what I
am now super excited about is taking all of my
expertise that I've developed over the last fifteen years in
the French solo saving world and sharing that with Kiwi sailors.
Because I had to move to France, I didn't know anybody,
(04:01):
I didn't know the language, and I have created, you know,
my my life all over again in the sort of
little west westy wild corner of Brittany in France. And
I've been the first Kiwi to go and fully integrate
myself into the French Silian circuit. And so the barrier
(04:21):
to entry is just huge. You know, if you don't
know people, if you don't speak the language, then you
just don't have access to this kind of of sailing.
And I'm now in a position where I can open
the door as wide as possible, bring in the rest
of the country with us, and then get Kiwi sailors
both onto the boat, and then also technicians and members
of our marine industry into the team as riggers, as
(04:45):
boat builders and so on. And the goal is to
get the whole country on board with us as we
enter the Ocean race in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Amazing, amazing. So how BIG's the crew and how have
you gone about assembling your crew? You've obviously started that.
What's the process behind that?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, well, again, the contrast with the wetbread back in
the day is pretty different. And you know, we used
to have these these huge boats like New Zealand Endeavor
that had sort of eighteen burly bearded, hairy, smelly dudes
on it. Now, you know, things have moved on a
fair bit. First of all, it's a mixed crew and
so women are on board and that is fantastic. It's
(05:24):
it's really good to have a boat both sexes involved
in a high performance team. It tends to mellow out
the crazy crazy sign and so yeah, so, so first
of all, that's really good. And then also the definition
of fully crewed has changed as well. And you know,
for the for the Auckland yachtes that go and do
(05:45):
the Coastal Classic and so on, you typically have sort
of ten people on a relatively small boat, maybe a
forty footer. We have a sixty footer and it's fully
crewed with only four sailors. And so that means that
each person has to have a number of strings to
their bow. You know, you can't have specialists. You know,
specialists are for insects. You know, humans are really good
(06:06):
doing a whole bunch of things and that's what we
have to do and the crew and so you can't
just have you know, don't want to get too technical,
but you can't just have a bowman or somebody who's
involved and just on pulling strings. Each person has to
have a global perspective as to what the routing or
the navigation is. I have to have somebody that's really
good at putting sales up on the front of the
boat when it's blown a wholly, and they also need
(06:29):
to be able to fix the boat if it goes
banging as well.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Wow, multi talented people are the ones you're after. So
ocean racing itself I'm sure you get asked this a lot. Yeah,
what is the attraction for you?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
It's not just getting splashed in the face for eighty
five days in a row. For me, and particularly with
the race that I just completed, the vondeg Globe, where
you do the solo, and the attraction is the fact
that it's multidisciplinary that both on land. I'm an entrepreneur,
so I have to run around and find sponsors and
make that connection with responsors. I do lots of speed
(07:06):
and engagements with my sponsors to activate the partnership within
their companies. And so, first of all, I provide value
to my sponsors and I have to go find them.
I run my own company. I do my own accounting,
often at two am. And then the actual sailing side
is well. I put together a technical team, and so
I'm a manager of a small company. I drive a
(07:31):
fantastically passionate group of really really skilled technicians on how
to prepare the boat in the most appropriate way. And
then when I'm actually out there by myself. It's it's
rare now in our modern era to be fully reliant
only upon yourself, and that is not only in competition,
but also in safety. You know that I've had medical training,
(07:53):
so I know how to do sutures, and when sailing
double handed, I once had to open a split you know,
close a split head somebody and you know, putting tens
ten stitches up his face to to sort them out again.
And and to be totally reliant upon myself in terms
of looking after myself, figuring out how to look after
(08:14):
the boat, all of the complicated systems on board, the navigation,
and finally there's the sort of actual sailing, the pulling
on the stringspit is actually a small minority of what
I actually get up to. And and so it's it's
this e collective mix which is really interesting and really
passionate and exciting. And then ultimately having that expertise in
(08:34):
the and creating that opportunity to get down to the
Southern Ocean, to be there with the Albatross by yourself,
and to be in control of this wildly powerful, crazy
machine and to feel at ease in the middle of
a storm is an incredibly powerful moment. You know, it's
it's it's a long journey that's got me there, But
to be in the Southern Ocean in a storm and
(08:56):
to be feeling good about it, and to be in
attack rather than survival mode. It's it's an incredibly addicting experience.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
What can I just ask you a bit more about that.
I think we've all same footage of the Southern Ocean
and boat like yours in the Southern Ocean. Is it
in any way.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Scary? It can be, It really can be, and yet
I do it anyway. And so as I said, this
is a sixty foot boat eighteen meters long. It's one
of the fastest boats in the world. And you're trying to,
you know, be a jockey on the back of that
and you know, control the beast. And the way that
(09:36):
I talk about it is if I am in phase
with the boat, if I'm changing sales at the right time,
if I'm on top of the maintenance, if everything's going well,
then I feel like the boat is really small. You know,
it's almost like sailing a laser out in the bay.
You know, I can whack a GiB in anytime I want.
I'm on top of my of my program. But as
soon as something goes wrong, the boat gets real big,
(09:58):
real fast, and that's when you realize that, oh man,
I'm out here by myself. I've only got two hands.
I've only got, you know, relatively small, small amount of
power that I can bring to bring to beer hair.
And so that's why anticipating is so so crucial. Experience
is so so crucial. You know, I've got a few
gray hairs now, and I'm happy that those count for
something these days. So so yeah, so it comes down
(10:22):
to controlling the beast and staying on top of it
and anticipating. But ultimately, when you're fully locked in and
things are going really well, it's amazing to be cruising
through five hundred miles a day on a boat out
there by yourself. It's amazing, I'll bet.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And another feature of it, you completed the last two
vond globe campaigns without burning any fossil fuels at all.
So how strong is your commitment to decarbonization?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Rock solid? And just for those that are listening, Yeah,
it's a sailboat, but sailboats have lots of complicated systems
on board now, and so we have computers, we have
satellite communication systems, we have a very high tech autopaylot.
Because we don't actually drive the boat ourselves. We put
on the strings and trim the sails and do the
(11:09):
navigation and all the rest of it. But actually the
boat drives itself for ninety nine percent at the time,
and all of that takes energy, obviously, and so everybody
else in the race runs a diesel generator that charges
the batteries and they you know, fire up the old
donkey a couple of times a day. And I felt
like of all of the mechanical sports in the world,
we had the opportunity to really show how things can
(11:31):
how things can be and should be. You know, we're
pushed by the wind. I think we should be charged
by the sun. And so during the course of several
refits of the last couple of years, I completely covered
the boat in solar panels and then developed some small
we call them hydro generators, but they're basically turbines that
we can drop off the back of the boat and
(11:52):
then as the as the flow of the water rushes past,
and then that'll work like a dynamo on a bicycle
wheel and actually charge out of the batteries that way.
And so I was the first sailor to ever do that.
In twenty sixteen, so the last time that I did
the race, and then this time I doubled down on
that principle of again going zero missions with main energy,
(12:14):
but then also adopting suppliers that were in line with
my philosophies. And so I was the only sailor that
was fully equipped with sales that can be recycled. And
so normally sales are sort of linear. You know, they
get built somewhere in the world, shipped to you from
a long distance, and you put them, put them up.
(12:35):
They are really robust. They survived the riggers of the
Southern Ocean, and then when they can no longer serve
on the boat, you've been them. And so this is
a technology that allows you to recapture the value of
the resources that go into those sales, and so that
was really important to me. And then also the ropes
that I had on board were biosourced and so not
petrol based. And so basically, you know, if you think
(12:59):
about it in terms of emissions, we talk about scope one,
Scope two, Scope three, what we produce, what our suppliers produced,
and then what our customers produce. And so I was
I also drive electric delivery vans from Maxis. I've got
an electric bike and that I used to drop my
kids off at school, and so I've gone through all
of my actions, both on land and at sea, to
(13:21):
be as coherently possible to be totally invested in this
idea of being charged by the sun outstanding.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Have you thought about what it might be like to
lead the fleet into Auckland in March of twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
To just saying that gives me goosebumps. You know that
I've had the incredible good fortune already in my career
to win a race around the world, and that included
winning a leg into Wellington, and that was an experience
that I held near and dear to my heart, and
just a dream of doing that into Auckland and sort
(13:55):
of living the same life from two perspectives. You know,
I was that sort of young boy in the eighties
and nineties with a goofy looking hat and you know,
out there walking around the Tabor looking at all the boats,
and you know, with stars in my eyes. And if
I have the opportunity in the next coming years to
be the you know, the hairy, smelly sailor on the
(14:17):
other side of that experience and then you know, look
up and inspire the next generation, then absolutely that's the goal.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Fantastic and to finish next steps. So here we are
in March of twenty twenty five. We get the feeling
it will roll around fairly quickly the start of twenty
twenty seven. I'm not saying there's a heap of time pressure,
but what are the next steps for you?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well, the next steps are to fully launch our campaign,
and so we're doing that now. This is the start
of New Zealand's new national national sports team, so out
to out ocean racing. As I've said, we want everybody
to get on board and in many ways we're hoping
to make this more of a grassroots New Zealand based
(14:56):
campaign because the America's Cup has got so big and
that can't really maintain its connection with New Zealand from
what I've seen, and obviously when overseas and now we've
got the stop over locked in we are coming here.
We've got a strong connection with the New Zealand marine
industry and so where we're connecting not only to partners
(15:19):
that are in our sector, but also looking for partners
that can get involved and want to use our platform
to be visible overseas. So it's about, you know, creating
a coalition of people that are psyched to go ocean
racing and can see the power and the value of
this team. And so that includes corporate partners, that include sailors,
(15:40):
that can include technicians, and then concretely, hopefully that means
either building the boat or acquiring a high level existing
secondhand one. And then obviously that means getting sailors over
to France where our technical base is at the moment,
and starting to get qus on boats and go fast. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Conrad has been energizing having you in the studio. I
must admit, yeah, I think you have that effect I
would imagine on most people you come into contact with.
What a project, what a what a time it is
ahead of you. Thanks for popping in. We'll get all
your details up on our socials so people can get
in touch if they want to. But thanks for stopping
in today.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Thank you very much. It's pleasure, good stuff, Conrad.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Conrad Coleman there who is heading up tier alto alter
I'll get it right. Ocean Racing for the Ocean Race,
which we'll had Auckland during its twenty twenty seven edition.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to news Talk sed B weekends from midday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Weekend Sport Podcast with Jason Fine
from Newstalk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Ocean Race, the world's toughest test of a team in sport,
is returning to Auckland in the twenty twenty seven edition
of the iconic Around the World Offshore Race, formerly known
as the Whitbread Round the World Race, the Volvo Ocean
Race last scene here in New Zealand in twenty eighteen.
Among those taking part will be key We Offshore sailor
and two times solo vond Globe racer Conrad Coleman, who
(00:36):
has announced his new team alt Oa Ocean Racing will
take on the challenge. Conrad Coleman's in studio with us.
Great to see you, mate, Thanks for stopping and tell
us about this project and your motivation for it.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Well, it's pretty epic because it's rare, as I'm forty
one now that we get to live out a childhood
dream and I grew up here in Auckland and every
couple of years then we had this epic Whitbread as
it was then fleet that came ripping in and out
of the harbor, typically with New Zealanders that were lifting
(01:09):
the trophy. You know, obviously Peter Blake, ground Dalton and
all of these legends, and as a schoolboy, this is
what got me excited. And I have now sort of
had a long and winding road, but it ultimately became
a professional ocean racing staler myself, but in a very
particular sector. You know, I moved to France to do
(01:32):
this solo ocean race, the Vonde Globe, and that is
completely completely unique. It's a professional ocean racing circuit based
around sailing solo either across Atlantic or indeed, as I've
just done two times around the world, and now the
ocean race as it is now called has adopted the
(01:52):
same fleet of boats that I have just become an
expert in sailing, and so I kind of feel like,
quite by accident, is that I've become sort of centrally
located in this fusion of these two worlds. What used
to be called the whipbread fully crued ocean racing coming
to New Zealand and what I've just completed, the non
stops all the race around the world.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So the boats then tell us about those are they
are they foiling boats?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yes? Absolutely so for around the world racing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So if you can imagine what we've had the chance
to see out on our harbor here recently with with
SALGP and of course the America's Cup foiling. They're foiler assisted,
so they don't completely fly or not at least in
a very stable manner, which is kind of problematic, end
(02:35):
up doing these sort of quite dramatic hop skips and
jumps and of course big splashdowns. But these are wild,
wild boats. You know, you could if you can make
the parallel to you know, Formula one is definitely the
America's Cup. You know, these are fragile beasts that you know,
gets shammy down at the end of their race. Everybody
goes home and sleeps in nice comfy beds at the
(02:56):
end of the day. This is not that you know.
What I do is if we go to a parallel
with the Motorsport World it is a World Championship rally,
and so that is gritty, it is brutal. It goes
all day all night, you know, up up over mountain passes,
and so it's the same kind of thing. You know,
(03:16):
we don't have a big, big, short crew. It's the
sailors that fix the boats. You have to be incredibly
multi talented, to be able to fix the boat and
get your hands stuck into the electronics, keep a very
complicated racing machine alive in some of the most treacherous
and dangerous places on our globe, so most notably the
Southern Ocean, where I was just a couple of months ago.
(03:38):
And so it's incredibly exciting and challenging because you know,
one day it's never liked the other. And what I
am now super excited about is taking all of my
expertise that I've developed over the last fifteen years in
the French solo saving world and sharing that with Kiwi sailors.
Because I had to move to France, I didn't know anybody,
(04:01):
I didn't know the language, and I have created, you know,
my my life all over again in the sort of
little west westy wild corner of Brittany in France. And
I've been the first Kiwi to go and fully integrate
myself into the French Silian circuit. And so the barrier
(04:21):
to entry is just huge. You know, if you don't
know people, if you don't speak the language, then you
just don't have access to this kind of of sailing.
And I'm now in a position where I can open
the door as wide as possible, bring in the rest
of the country with us, and then get Kiwi sailors
both onto the boat, and then also technicians and members
of our marine industry into the team as riggers, as
(04:45):
boat builders and so on. And the goal is to
get the whole country on board with us as we
enter the Ocean race in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Amazing, amazing. So how BIG's the crew and how have
you gone about assembling your crew? You've obviously started that.
What's the process behind that?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, well, again, the contrast with the wetbread back in
the day is pretty different. And you know, we used
to have these these huge boats like New Zealand Endeavor
that had sort of eighteen burly bearded, hairy, smelly dudes
on it. Now, you know, things have moved on a
fair bit. First of all, it's a mixed crew and
so women are on board and that is fantastic. It's
(05:24):
it's really good to have a boat both sexes involved
in a high performance team. It tends to mellow out
the crazy crazy sign and so yeah, so, so first
of all, that's really good. And then also the definition
of fully crewed has changed as well. And you know,
for the for the Auckland yachtes that go and do
(05:45):
the Coastal Classic and so on, you typically have sort
of ten people on a relatively small boat, maybe a
forty footer. We have a sixty footer and it's fully
crewed with only four sailors. And so that means that
each person has to have a number of strings to
their bow. You know, you can't have specialists. You know,
specialists are for insects. You know, humans are really good
(06:06):
doing a whole bunch of things and that's what we
have to do and the crew and so you can't
just have you know, don't want to get too technical,
but you can't just have a bowman or somebody who's
involved and just on pulling strings. Each person has to
have a global perspective as to what the routing or
the navigation is. I have to have somebody that's really
good at putting sales up on the front of the
boat when it's blown a wholly, and they also need
(06:29):
to be able to fix the boat if it goes
banging as well.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Wow, multi talented people are the ones you're after. So
ocean racing itself I'm sure you get asked this a lot. Yeah,
what is the attraction for you?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
It's not just getting splashed in the face for eighty
five days in a row. For me, and particularly with
the race that I just completed, the vondeg Globe, where
you do the solo, and the attraction is the fact
that it's multidisciplinary that both on land. I'm an entrepreneur,
so I have to run around and find sponsors and
make that connection with responsors. I do lots of speed
(07:06):
and engagements with my sponsors to activate the partnership within
their companies. And so, first of all, I provide value
to my sponsors and I have to go find them.
I run my own company. I do my own accounting,
often at two am. And then the actual sailing side
is well. I put together a technical team, and so
I'm a manager of a small company. I drive a
(07:31):
fantastically passionate group of really really skilled technicians on how
to prepare the boat in the most appropriate way. And
then when I'm actually out there by myself. It's it's
rare now in our modern era to be fully reliant
only upon yourself, and that is not only in competition,
but also in safety. You know that I've had medical training,
(07:53):
so I know how to do sutures, and when sailing
double handed, I once had to open a split you know,
close a split head somebody and you know, putting tens
ten stitches up his face to to sort them out again.
And and to be totally reliant upon myself in terms
of looking after myself, figuring out how to look after
(08:14):
the boat, all of the complicated systems on board, the navigation,
and finally there's the sort of actual sailing, the pulling
on the stringspit is actually a small minority of what
I actually get up to. And and so it's it's
this e collective mix which is really interesting and really
passionate and exciting. And then ultimately having that expertise in
(08:34):
the and creating that opportunity to get down to the
Southern Ocean, to be there with the Albatross by yourself,
and to be in control of this wildly powerful, crazy
machine and to feel at ease in the middle of
a storm is an incredibly powerful moment. You know, it's
it's it's a long journey that's got me there, But
to be in the Southern Ocean in a storm and
(08:56):
to be feeling good about it, and to be in
attack rather than survival mode. It's it's an incredibly addicting experience.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
What can I just ask you a bit more about that.
I think we've all same footage of the Southern Ocean
and boat like yours in the Southern Ocean. Is it
in any way.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Scary? It can be, It really can be, and yet
I do it anyway. And so as I said, this
is a sixty foot boat eighteen meters long. It's one
of the fastest boats in the world. And you're trying to,
you know, be a jockey on the back of that
and you know, control the beast. And the way that
(09:36):
I talk about it is if I am in phase
with the boat, if I'm changing sales at the right time,
if I'm on top of the maintenance, if everything's going well,
then I feel like the boat is really small. You know,
it's almost like sailing a laser out in the bay.
You know, I can whack a GiB in anytime I want.
I'm on top of my of my program. But as
soon as something goes wrong, the boat gets real big,
(09:58):
real fast, and that's when you realize that, oh man,
I'm out here by myself. I've only got two hands.
I've only got, you know, relatively small, small amount of
power that I can bring to bring to beer hair.
And so that's why anticipating is so so crucial. Experience
is so so crucial. You know, I've got a few
gray hairs now, and I'm happy that those count for
something these days. So so yeah, so it comes down
(10:22):
to controlling the beast and staying on top of it
and anticipating. But ultimately, when you're fully locked in and
things are going really well, it's amazing to be cruising
through five hundred miles a day on a boat out
there by yourself. It's amazing, I'll bet.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And another feature of it, you completed the last two
vond globe campaigns without burning any fossil fuels at all.
So how strong is your commitment to decarbonization?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Rock solid? And just for those that are listening, Yeah,
it's a sailboat, but sailboats have lots of complicated systems
on board now, and so we have computers, we have
satellite communication systems, we have a very high tech autopaylot.
Because we don't actually drive the boat ourselves. We put
on the strings and trim the sails and do the
(11:09):
navigation and all the rest of it. But actually the
boat drives itself for ninety nine percent at the time,
and all of that takes energy, obviously, and so everybody
else in the race runs a diesel generator that charges
the batteries and they you know, fire up the old
donkey a couple of times a day. And I felt
like of all of the mechanical sports in the world,
we had the opportunity to really show how things can
(11:31):
how things can be and should be. You know, we're
pushed by the wind. I think we should be charged
by the sun. And so during the course of several
refits of the last couple of years, I completely covered
the boat in solar panels and then developed some small
we call them hydro generators, but they're basically turbines that
we can drop off the back of the boat and
(11:52):
then as the as the flow of the water rushes past,
and then that'll work like a dynamo on a bicycle
wheel and actually charge out of the batteries that way.
And so I was the first sailor to ever do that.
In twenty sixteen, so the last time that I did
the race, and then this time I doubled down on
that principle of again going zero missions with main energy,
(12:14):
but then also adopting suppliers that were in line with
my philosophies. And so I was the only sailor that
was fully equipped with sales that can be recycled. And
so normally sales are sort of linear. You know, they
get built somewhere in the world, shipped to you from
a long distance, and you put them, put them up.
(12:35):
They are really robust. They survived the riggers of the
Southern Ocean, and then when they can no longer serve
on the boat, you've been them. And so this is
a technology that allows you to recapture the value of
the resources that go into those sales, and so that
was really important to me. And then also the ropes
that I had on board were biosourced and so not
petrol based. And so basically, you know, if you think
(12:59):
about it in terms of emissions, we talk about scope one,
Scope two, Scope three, what we produce, what our suppliers produced,
and then what our customers produce. And so I was
I also drive electric delivery vans from Maxis. I've got
an electric bike and that I used to drop my
kids off at school, and so I've gone through all
of my actions, both on land and at sea, to
(13:21):
be as coherently possible to be totally invested in this
idea of being charged by the sun outstanding.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Have you thought about what it might be like to
lead the fleet into Auckland in March of twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
To just saying that gives me goosebumps. You know that
I've had the incredible good fortune already in my career
to win a race around the world, and that included
winning a leg into Wellington, and that was an experience
that I held near and dear to my heart, and
just a dream of doing that into Auckland and sort
(13:55):
of living the same life from two perspectives. You know,
I was that sort of young boy in the eighties
and nineties with a goofy looking hat and you know,
out there walking around the Tabor looking at all the boats,
and you know, with stars in my eyes. And if
I have the opportunity in the next coming years to
be the you know, the hairy, smelly sailor on the
(14:17):
other side of that experience and then you know, look
up and inspire the next generation, then absolutely that's the goal.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Fantastic and to finish next steps. So here we are
in March of twenty twenty five. We get the feeling
it will roll around fairly quickly the start of twenty
twenty seven. I'm not saying there's a heap of time pressure,
but what are the next steps for you?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well, the next steps are to fully launch our campaign,
and so we're doing that now. This is the start
of New Zealand's new national national sports team, so out
to out ocean racing. As I've said, we want everybody
to get on board and in many ways we're hoping
to make this more of a grassroots New Zealand based
(14:56):
campaign because the America's Cup has got so big and
that can't really maintain its connection with New Zealand from
what I've seen, and obviously when overseas and now we've
got the stop over locked in we are coming here.
We've got a strong connection with the New Zealand marine
industry and so where we're connecting not only to partners
(15:19):
that are in our sector, but also looking for partners
that can get involved and want to use our platform
to be visible overseas. So it's about, you know, creating
a coalition of people that are psyched to go ocean
racing and can see the power and the value of
this team. And so that includes corporate partners, that include sailors,
(15:40):
that can include technicians, and then concretely, hopefully that means
either building the boat or acquiring a high level existing
secondhand one. And then obviously that means getting sailors over
to France where our technical base is at the moment,
and starting to get qus on boats and go fast. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Conrad has been energizing having you in the studio. I
must admit, yeah, I think you have that effect I
would imagine on most people you come into contact with.
What a project, what a what a time it is
ahead of you. Thanks for popping in. We'll get all
your details up on our socials so people can get
in touch if they want to. But thanks for stopping
in today.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Thank you very much. It's pleasure, good stuff, Conrad.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Conrad Coleman there who is heading up tier alto alter
I'll get it right. Ocean Racing for the Ocean Race,
which we'll had Auckland during its twenty twenty seven edition.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to news Talk sed B weekends from midday, or follow
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