Black becomes blue, the German flag becomes the Swiss flag, the crew member becomes a budding skipper: Rosalin Kuiper is continuing her offshore career with the dynamism with which she first took the hearts of her crew mates and then the fans by storm in Boris Herrmann's Team Malizia. The 28-year-old has changed racing team - in line with Team Malizia's navigator Nico Lunven.
The Frenchman and the Dutchwoman form the new dual leadership of Team Holcim - PRB. The 40-year-old Nico Lunven is chief skipper and will compete in the Vendée Globe as a soloist for the Swiss team and as a rival to Boris Herrmann. Rosalin Kuiper is supporting Lunven and is subsequently the designated skipper for "Holcim - PRB's" start in the Ocean Race Europe 2025. "It's fabulous that Nico is my guide on this adventure. I can learn so much from him," Kuiper pays homage to her new boss after her time at Boris Herrmann's side.
Rosalin Kuiper started in the Opti
21 years have passed since her first Opti outing. In 2002, as a seven-year-old, Rosalin Kuiper ventured onto the Zoetermeerse Plas near The Hague for the first time in a children's dinghy. She didn't do it alone because she was terrified of the water. The family dog Takkie was also part of the party. Many years followed in which little Rosie cycled to the lake straight after school, set up the Opti and waited for her mother and Takkie to join her. Two hands and four paws formed the crew as they set off.
Rosalin's thirst for sport increases in her teenage years. She intensively pursued her favourite Dutch sports such as athletics and hockey. Sport in the wind and waves only came to the fore again when the eighteen-year-old succumbed to the fascination of offshore sailing like love at first sight on a trip. At the time, she was earning her living as a deckhand on a charter boat in the Australian dream destination of the Whitsunday Islands. She is fascinated by the world of boats. The feeling she had on her first weekend cruise remains with her to this day: "It was as if a fire had started burning in my chest. It was the most incredible thing I had ever done."
I knew immediately that I wanted to do this in my life"
Very few people have realised their lifelong dream with the determination with which Rosalin Kuiper goes about it. Back home, she attends a sailing school to learn the ropes. She then applied to the Team Heiner Youth Academy. The support programme was set up by three-time Ocean Race circumnavigator and Olympic bronze medallist Roy Heiner. Rosalin remembers her bumpy start: "I was too late with my application, but I knew that if I wanted to take part in regattas one day, I had to be there. I knew that this would be my only way into the world of sailing. So I went to extreme lengths, calling them again and again."
Rosalin Kuiper takes what she wants
When the selection of future pupils was just two days away, she had a simple plan: "I just went." Her perseverance was rewarded. "I had the least experience of all. I think in the end they just thought, 'She's so determined, so we should give her a chance to prove herself'." Looking back, she knows that being accepted into the junior academy was one of the most important milestones in her career. "I'm very grateful for that. Otherwise my life would have been very different. I wouldn't be where I am now."
It is an interesting coincidence that Rosalin Kuiper is also studying psychology at the University of Leiden. Holland's first ocean race winner and ocean icon Carolijn Brouwer also studied at this university. Rosalin Kuiper remembers the three years of study and the parallel sailing programme with 30 to 40-hour weekly commitments as "pretty full years".
I was either studying, sailing or going to the gym"
The aim of the academy is to turn the young recruits into good all-round sailors. "We have learnt how to perform all positions on board - including the role of skipper. Navigation, trimming, foreship. Everything that is important for sailing on large boats."
The first ocean race for Rosalin Kuiper
Six months after starting her training, Rosalin Kuiper is determined to one day sail around the world in the Ocean Race. Her first step was to take part in the classic Middle Sea Race on the 46-foot racer "Tilting the Windmills". A couple sailing with her offered to let the ambitious young woman stay with them in Australia afterwards so that she could try for a place in the legendary Sydney to Hobart Race. "I think they were a bit shocked when I announced that I would be there in a week," Rosalin recalls with a smile. When she arrived, she knew that her "journey" was only just beginning: "I was on a mission."
Fully focussed on her goal, she uses the entry list for the Sydney Hobart Race to draw up a list of all the top boats. She also makes a note of the harbours in which the boats are moored. And the names of the team managers. Then she visits each team in person.
"It wasn't easy," she remembers, "I was 21 years old and all alone in a country I didn't really know. 99 per cent of people told me I was a very nice girl, but that my mission was impossible." Supported by her family - her parents Taco and Olga Kuiper, sister Bodine and brother Camiel - she is still determined to realise her lifelong dream.
She meets Bradshaw Kellet, the captain of the 100-foot super-maxi "InfoTrack". When Kellet hears about Kuiper, he decides to give her a chance and offers her a job on the shore crew. The tenacious applicant uses the occasion as a springboard. She accepts horrendously early starting times, long journeys and more hardship, does it all with a smile on her face - and proves herself. In the end, she is allowed to take part in a training session and actually compete in her first Sydney Hobart Race on the 100-foot maxi in 2018.
Kuiper joins the deep-sea elite
She doesn't master the challenge with just anyone. It is the Ocean Race elite into whose circle she has been accepted. The 24-strong "InfoTrack" team includes such veterans as six-time circumnavigator Chris Nicholson and record-breaking ocean racer Bouwe Bekking, a fellow countryman.
Kuiper then continued her newly launched career in the European Swan One design racing series before being hired by an Australian woman to helm her Cookson 50. "It was a great job," enthuses Rosalin with a grin, "she sent me to the Caribbean to buy the boat. It was funny to see the look on some people's faces when they realised this blonde girl was in charge."
But the Ocean Race remains Rosalin Kuiper's number one goal. She was offered the chance to get started by Chris Nicholson and the team on the VO65 "AkzoNobel" with the assignment on the European sponsor tour after the Ocean Race 2018/2019. She proved herself again - and moved up to the race crew for The Ocean Race Europe 2021, which Boris Herrmann's co-skipper Will Harris is also competing in with "AkzoNobel", while the new "Malizia - Seaexplorer" is being built in France.
Harris is impressed with how Rosalin Kuiper "sails and deals with the Australian sailing gang". He thought: "If she can manage to work with them for months with a smile on her face, then she must fit into our team and get on with our guys." Herrmann's loyal companion recommends her to Team Malizia as an ideal team-mate. Rosalin Kuiper initially thought the call from Team Director Holly Cova at the start of 2022 was a joke, before quickly realising how serious it was. "Of course I jumped at the chance," she says, using the same words she now uses to comment on her move to Holcim - PRB.
Kuiper receives her contract offer from Team Malizia after a training session with Boris and crew. She immediately relocates to Vannes, where Team Malizia's new pride and joy is being built. There she immerses herself in the technical side of building "Malizia - Seaexplorer" and learns all about the boat's complex hydraulic and electronic systems. She knows that any extra knowledge will make repairs in the Ocean Race easier for her: "If something breaks, you have to act quickly. If you have installed the system yourself, you can repair it more quickly. This boat was so much more technical than any other I'd ever seen, but I felt like I knew it inside out."
The consequences of the intensive preparation can be experienced at first hand at Kuiper's Ocean Race premiere with Team Malizia over a six-month race. Many moments are etched in her mind and in the memories of millions of fans. As brave as an eight-thousander, as funny as a comic figure and as endeared to the Dutch royal family: Rosalin Kuiper is the only female sailor in the 14th edition of the Ocean Race to have completed all nine legs.
"Rosie is fearless as a sailor. Much more fearless than me, for example," Boris Herrmann, who is plagued by a fear of heights, attests to his courageous fellow competitor after several hours of repair work at dizzying heights. For Rosalin Kuiper, even a severe laceration over her right eye and the concussion she sustained in a shock fall from her bunk while asleep shortly before the Cape Horn summit did nothing to change the offensive interpretation of her job. No complaints came from her lips afterwards, despite the boat bucking in the Southern Ocean for days.
She has this incredible attitude and always gives her all"
Boris Herrmann attests to this for Rosalin Kuiper, whose inclusion in his team he has never regretted. The 15-year-old former skipper adds: "Rosie is a great communicator and a great sailor. She is always in a good mood, has good energy and is therefore the team joker. She studied psychology and likes to think about how a team works and how everything fits together."
Malizia stand-in Chris Pratt summarised his impressions of the "Flying Dutchwoman" more succinctly: "Rosie is like a cartoon character: always hyper-motivated, committed and in a good mood." Nobody laughs as infectiously as she does. Anyone who has listened to the podcast that Rosalin Kuiper produced with Boris Herrmann during the Ocean Race had a lot to laugh about with her, even during the toughest times at sea, when she had radio conversations with the competition on her renamed "Bio-Boutique" and developed her own scales for the moods of her fellow sailors.
Kuiper grew into a family with the men on board during the Ocean Race. She often found it difficult to leave the small, protected space in the closed cockpit of the "Malizia - Seaexplorer", which they shared like a close-knit community, at the end of each leg. Thanks to the flat hierarchy established by Boris Herrmann, Rosalin Kuiper also felt encouraged as an ocean race rookie: "Boris gave us wings."
Rosalin Kuiper changes team
The Dutchwoman has now used her wings to fly away. With the blessing and sincere good wishes of Boris Herrmann and Team Director Holly Cova, with whom Rosalin Kuiper spoke immediately after the first Holcim PRB call. She leaves with the blessing of both and an "ambivalent feeling, because my heart still belongs to Team Malizia, where I have made friends for life". However, she couldn't and didn't want to resist the offer from the Swiss any more than Nico Lunven, who is finally getting his own boat for the Vendée Globe.
It was Rosalin Kuiper who told her new clients on the very first phone call: "You have to have Nico for the Vendée Globe. He's so good, he can win the race." She had no idea that it would turn out the same way. It was only shortly before signing the contract, when she wanted to know for certain who her new chief skipper would be, that she heard about the new "joint venture" with Lunven. "He is one of the best ocean sailors in the world, knows so much about navigation, strategy and the weather. And he treats everyone with respect. I couldn't wish for more," she pays homage to her role model.
The timetable for the coming years has been finalised: Because "Holcim - PRB" is not qualified for the Transat Jacques Vabre, Lunven and Kuiper will sail the Imoca, which will initially only be roughly overhauled, to Martinique with a small crew from 1 November, almost parallel to the Transat classic. In addition to Kuiper and Lunven, two team technicians and an on-board reporter will also be on board. From there, Nico Lunven - like other skippers - will take part in the back-to-la-base regatta in solo mode in order to qualify for the Vendée Globe 2024/2025.
After that, the new management team will know exactly what it wants for the upcoming major refit of the 2022 Verdier design "Holcim - PRB" for the future. It is clear that a certain amount of Malizia influence will flow into the refit. "'Malizia - Seaexplorer' was strong and safe in the Ocean Race," states Rosalin, "which is why we are also discussing the hull of 'Holcim - PRB'. The boat is fast and a strong all-rounder. However, we have also seen that it can be dangerous if it dives deep into the waves and stalls. That's why we want to make it stronger for sailing in the Southern Ocean."
Kuiper wants to set up his own team
Team player Kuiper has a medium-term goal for herself: if everything goes according to plan, she will take over "Holcim - PRB" as skipper after the Vendée Globe and lead her own team into the Ocean Race Europe. She has announced that it will be "multi-talented and diverse", but has not yet named any names. Lunven and Kuiper rebuild Team Holcim - PRB.
Almost none of the old guard, who had lined up with Kevin Escoffier to successfully contest the Vendée Globe in the next attempt after the loss of the previous yacht in 2020, remain. Parallel to the renewal process, Rosalin Kuiper wants to bend her learning curve further upwards under Nico Lunven.
She will find respite from life in the high seas fast lane in the house she has just bought with her partner Coen in the 5,000-strong community of Warmond, right on the shores of Het Joppe lake between Amsterdam and The Hague in South Holland. They bought their anchorage for life when Team Malizia passed Cape Horn. This spirit accompanies the couple. They renovated their home themselves and live just 50 metres from the water. Rosalin can get on a wingfoil board here when she feels like it. They see their home as a refuge - especially during demanding career times. Rosalin's partner has just taken over a company.
At this point in her life, the Dutch high-flyer knows: "My body is telling me that I need to rest, because the big years are yet to come." She doesn't want to rule out any path in the future. Not even the Vendée Globe race. "A year ago, I would have described such a thought as 'crazy'," she admits, "but I'm keeping everything open. The only thing I don't want is to put myself under pressure."
