Never before has a German sailor been the focus of global public attention as much as Boris Herrmann, when he sailed across the Atlantic with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in August 2019.
The two-week trip took the unusual crew on the unusual boat from Plymouth to New York: 16-year-old Thunberg, her father Boris Herrmann, his co-skipper and team founder Pierre Casiraghi and a filmmaker sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean on the "Malizia II".
The aim was to transport the 16-year-old, who has become world-famous for her "school strikes for the climate", emission-free to America, where she wanted to take part in the UN Climate Summit in September.
Herrmann's team, which was actually preparing to take part in the Vendée Globe 2020, pulled off the coup of taking Greta Thunberg on board and bringing her across the Atlantic. The actual training plan in France was quickly reorganised for this. However, the media response to the trip was not all positive; critics criticised the fact that the Malizia team would be taking flights back to Europe and that Thunberg's journey was therefore not completely CO2-neutral.
But how did Boris Herrmann experience everyday life on board? The young Swede had never sailed before and was about to embark on an adventure on an ocean-going racing yacht - what did that mean for her choice of route and watch rhythm? How much of the media interest was even present on board? But also: How much time did the cruise in the focus of world publicity cost in terms of preparing for the Vendée Globe next year? And: How does Boris Herrmann rate Alex Thomson's new "Hugo Boss"?
