New Europe closes the IMOCA race Pirates and painted nails

Abandoning was hard to take, he had put everything into his programme for the three years since he had bought an IMOCA, having never really sailed one nor done much solo sailing, but dreaming of completing the solo round the world race. 

Today as he and Swiss sports scientist and fellow Iron Man racer Bérénice Charrez crossed the finish line of the Transat Café L’Or in 18^th place in the IMOCA fleet, the Hungarian declared that his goal of completing the 2028 Vendée Globe is back on track. 

They finished wearing huge smiles, dressed as pirates, with all of their nails – hands and feet – painted bright colours, the rousing theme tune of Pirates of the Caribbean welcoming them into Fort-de-France. 

The elapsed time for New Europe is 20 days 4 hours 23 mins 48 seconds, 13 hours 33 minutes after Conrad Colman and Mathieu Blanchard (MSIG Europe). 

Weöres smiled, “After my Vendée Globe which I retired from, this was the biggest race of the year. And so I am super happy we finished, I am still in the game and did all the races this year the Course des Caps and the Défi Azimuth and finished them and then this Transat Café L’Or. “

He added. “It was a great Transat for me, the longest I’ve done, but I enjoyed each, each, each day. It was complicated one for us, we had everything as you would expect, bad weather in the English Channel, in the Bay of Biscay it was as you would expect with the fronts, down on the Morocco coast was very cool and seeing the fishermen there, and we had lots of small technical issues, nothing big, we had to climb the mast twice, we caught some fishing nets and we had to dive the boat and once we capsized, but it was all so much fun, then having this lovely sail into Martinque has been wonderful.  We had really hard times but the humour on the boat was always there. We had good teamwork all the time.”

Charrez, who it has to be said bears more of a passing resemblance to Keira Knightley’s character than Szabi does Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, said “If I was to describe our Transat in two words it would be patience and resilience. And a big thanks to Szabi for his confidence in me”

 Asked what the toughest times was she replied, 

“The big f++king storm, man that was a b++tard! For me that was the hardest.”

Szabi who only started IMOCA racing in 2022 and has no background in the Mini, the Figaro, Class 40 or such like detailed “I think a lot of the race was really hard but I see how much confidence I have gained in the last four years.  It was all generally under control. But as I said weather was as you’d expect the English Channel was as it should be, the Bay of Biscay was as it should be, and then I have never sailed in such developed trade winds, it was 25kts with the big gennaker up it was really fun. And finishing into Martinique as a pirate was fun.” 

Charrez confirmed, “It was an incredible experience on all fronts, the sailing side and the human side, the sailing was really tough in the first week, the first night in the English Channel was awful, probably my worst night of my life in a sailboat, the big front along the coast of Portugal was also pretty hard core. We were exhausted, dehydrated, and then along the coast of Morocco we sailed upwind for nine days. We were close to the shore off Morocco and then these trade winds coming to Martinique, and we had some good racing with Conrad for a few days. And the finish, when you don’t see land for two weeks coming into this beautiful island is incredible. And on the human side it is was fun, I learned a lot, we had some issues we fixed, we optimised the pilot, we optimised the A2.”

And the painted nails?

The deal was every day Bérénice would varnish one nail and if they finished after more than 20 days then Szabi should have all of his done.

And so it was.