Alain Colas (16 September 1943 – 16 November 1978) was a French sailor, the first to complete a solitary round-the-world race in a multihull.^[1][2] He met Éric Tabarly in Sydney in 1967, and bought Pen Duick IV from him in 1970, and won the "Transat" in 1972.^[3] In 1972, he started the construction of a 72m (236 feet) 4 masted monohull for the 1976 "Transat".^[1]

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (April 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,164 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Alain Colas]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Alain Colas}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Born, Disappeared ...

Alain Colas
Manureva, a few days before the start of the first Route du Rhum
Born	(1943-09-16)16 September 1943 Clamecy, Nièvre
Disappeared	at sea
Status	Missing for 45 years, 5 months and 8 days
Nationality	French

Close

He broke his right ankle, underwent 22 surgeries, and got back on his feet for the solitary transatlantic race. Éric Tabarly won, and Alain Colas arrived 2nd, but was classed 5th. On 5 November 1978, he took part in his last race, the first Route du Rhum. On 16 November 1978, as he passed the Azores, he sent his last radio message saying that everything was alright and sailing well. Neither his boat Manureva nor his body were ever found.^[4][5]

• List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea
• Manureva (Pen Duick IV)
• Phocéa
• INA (French video archives) on Alain Colas