Ocean Race Atlantic 2026: DMG MORI Adds Lunven and Davies as the Boat Build Hits the Water

The Ocean Race Atlantic - the first point-to-point race in The Ocean Race's 50-year history - starts September 1 in New York and finishes in Lorient. Four-person crews. Mandatory 50-50 gender balance. IMOCA class. The fleet has been forming up slowly through the spring, and this week DMG MORI Sailing Team made the most consequential addition of the build cycle.

Kojiro Shiraishi's program announced that Nicolas Lunven and Sam Davies will lead sports and technical optimization on the new boat. Lunven is one of the most respected navigators in the IMOCA class and was the brains behind several Vendee Globe podium finishes. Davies has a Vendee Globe finish on her own resume and an instinct for hard-running boats that has been visible since her Roxy days. Together they fill the experience gap that DMG MORI has carried since Shiraishi's 2020 program.

The Boat: Multiplast Build, Late Spring Launch

The new IMOCA is being built by Multiplast in Vannes - a yard with a long line of competitive offshore boats out the door - and is scheduled to launch in late spring 2026. That timing is tight. From splash to a 1 September NYC start, the team will have roughly 90 days to commission, sail, and tune. For an IMOCA build that includes a new keel system, foils, and a fresh mast section, that is the kind of schedule where things go wrong.

The team's choice to lock in Lunven and Davies now - before the boat is in the water - is the right call. Sea trials with a competent crew on board catch problems weeks earlier than sea trials with a half-formed crew. Expect a brisk delivery from Vannes to Lorient, then a hard week in the Bay of Biscay before the boat heads to New York.

What 50-50 Crew Rules Are Doing to the Class

The Ocean Race Atlantic's mandatory two-women, two-men crew is a deliberate course change for the IMOCA class, and it has reshaped the recruiting market. Francesca Clapcich's 11th Hour Racing program, Boris Herrmann's Team Malizia, Oliver Heer's Embrace the Challenge, and DMG MORI are the four entries who have publicly committed to the rule. Several other teams are still finalizing their crew structure, but the new IMOCAs being built for 2026 are being optimized around four-person watch rotations - new bunk layouts, new shared workspace at the chart table, new heads with two doors.

The cynical reading is that the rule was sponsor-friendly. The honest reading is that the rule is technically interesting. A four-person crew at 50-50 is the most diverse crew structure the IMOCA class has run, and it forces design decisions - galley access from the leeward bunk, head ventilation, the weight of two foul-weather lockers instead of one - that the class has resisted for a decade.

Boris Herrmann's Bet

The other entry worth tracking is Team Malizia's new Antoine Koch design. Koch has been quiet about the foil package, but the renderings released in February show a wider, flatter forward sections than Malizia's last boat - a signal that they expect a high-percentage offshore breeze on the New York to Lorient track. They are not wrong. The Atlantic in early September averages 18 to 25 knots on the rhumb line, with a north-of-track depression every 4 to 5 days. The boats that win this race will be the boats that handle 6-meter seas under autopilot at 20-plus knots without losing the rig.

What This Means for the Rest of the Year

The Ocean Race Atlantic feeds directly into the 2027 Ocean Race - many of these boats and crews will be back next year. Whoever builds a strong four-person system this summer will start 2027 with a real edge. Shiraishi's program just bought itself a major piece of that edge by hiring Lunven and Davies before the new boat ever touched water. It is a rare thing in IMOCA: a sponsor-driven team making a textbook strategic call.

The September 1 start in New York is 18 weeks away. Five fully crewed IMOCAs are now public. Four to six more are likely to enter before the August 1 deadline.