Kiwi Below Deck and YouTube star Colin MacRae is sailing away from reality TV to circumnavigate the world in a hurricane-ravaged and now-restored catamaran.
MacRae has just flown back to New Zealand to see friends and family after six years away.
"My little brother, Las, just had a baby boy, making me an uncle for the first time, which is a huge deal to me."
The 33-year-old promised himself he would sail back home in his 13.7m catamaran, Parlay Revival, but that vow will have to wait until his epic Pacific crossing from Mexico in February next year.
The catamaran has turned out to be an ongoing labour of love mixed with torturous setbacks. Back in 2017, after the massive Hurricane Irma hit the Caribbean, MacRae spotted the sunken Lagoon 450 cat in the Caribbean island of Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, in a floating graveyard of destroyed boats.
The insurance company called the boat a total loss, people called him crazy, but MacRae knew he could bring it back to life. He set about re-floating, repairing, and reviving the catamaran, then called Parlay.
"It was worth half a million [US$] before the storm and I obviously got it for a fraction of that," he says.
He fixed the yacht up enough that it could be sailed out of port to Guatemala, where MacRae spent five months overseeing repairs in the equatorial heat to restore Parlay Revival to her former glory.
The former Mount Albert Grammar boy fell in love with sailing at age 16 when he was given a Hobie Cat. He completed a mechanical engineering degree in Auckland but he quickly realised he didn't want to work in an office. Nearly 14 years ago he left New Zealand for a life at sea and quickly found positions as chief engineer on superyachts.
Bravo Star Colin MacRae's boat Parlay Revival. Photo / Instagram
After the restoration of Parlay Revival, MacRae and his crew sailed to the Pacific Ocean and began his lifelong dream of sailing around the world, while living and working on the vessel.
"She is now literally the strongest Lagoon 450 catamaran in the world," he says.
"We have sailed to around 25 countries now, and around 20,000 nautical miles, through the Panama Canal, and are making our way up the Pacific coast of Central America. I have two rescue dogs with me and we normally sail with six to eight crew, so it's a full-on operation."
Scarcely a moment of Parlay Revival's journey has not been captured after MacRae formed a YouTube channel called Sailing Parlay Revival, which has gained hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
"We just uploaded our 170th episode. It has taken us three and a half years to get this far, and the support is overwhelming," he says.
"After repairing all the hurricane damage, we actually went to sail across the Pacific a few years ago but found major structural damage on the boat. We did a whole video series of the repairs, and that really got us a lot of street credit in the industry because I think your average person would have given up."
That damage set his Pacific crossing to New Zealand back a couple of years. The boat being struck by lightning and the effects of Covid 19 was super-demoralising, MacRae says, but made great raw and authentic footage.
"The audience responded so well to it, saying I had that Kiwi can-do attitude, which boosted the subscribers like crazy. So I guess it's those repair videos that really set us apart from all the other sailing channels, and got us to where we are today."
The Sailing Parlay Revival's most watched video had 2.2 million views, with the second coming in at 1.7 million. That featured MacRae getting a boil on his backside which he now admits to being a little embarrassing.
Colin MacRae is sailing away from reality TV to circumnavigate the world. Photo / Instagram
Each Sunday a new episode of Sailing Parlay Revival is released and MacRae says the important message is that when you put your mind to something, anything is possible.
"We have done the extraordinary in most people's eyes so they get inspiration from our videos, seeing us sailing around the world now after years of torture, of grinding fibreglass, it makes people believe anything truly is possible," he says.
"It makes for better footage for the YouTube channel, and is a constant party with so much happening - the content we get is ridiculous. We surf, dive, fish, spearfish and sail our way around the world!"
MacRae says their voyages attract a lot of friends, with people reaching out on Instagram to meet up at ports.
Below Deck must have liked what they saw too. They asked MacRae to fill the role of chief engineer for their show Below Deck Sailing for two seasons, which screened this year and last.
"I was so hesitant to be that exposed but decided to do it to promote my YouTube channel, as that's where my heart and soul lies."
MacRae says being on the show was incredibly stressful - on camera 24/7, mic'd up the whole time so even a whisper under his breath was recorded for six weeks straight. It was, says the hardened seaman, "challenging".
"The second season was so much easier as I knew the drill. It has already opened a lot of doors and I got a pretty good edit," he laughs.
What with cast hook-ups and the Below Deck yacht Parsifal III crashing into a dock, it's clear MacRae prefers his YouTube stardom to that of a reality TV star.
Now he's preparing for the Pacific crossing from Mexico next year which he describes as "one of the biggest adventures of my life so far".
Sailing the biggest ocean on the planet cannot be underestimated, he says. While crossing from Mexico to French Polynesia, he and his crew will be in one of the most isolated parts of the world.
The aim is to arrive in New Zealand by November next year to avoid the dreaded cyclone season.
"This is no joke, and we have to do a lot of prep to the boat, beef up all the safety systems, brush up on a lot of medical knowledge and procedures," he says.
