Alain Colas was a French sailor, the first to complete a solitary round-the-world race in a multihull. He met Éric Tabarly in Sydney in 1967, and bought Pen Duick IV from him in 1970, and won the "Transat" in 1972. The same year, he started the construction of a 72m 4-masted monohull for the 1976 "Transat".