His news that he was no longer sailing due to illness had already caused a stir last autumn. Wave of get-well wishes and expressions of sympathy taken care of. How much more will Wilfried Erdmann's death affect the sailors, some of whom only found the sport through him, through his books, his lectures and his trips?
The adventurer wrote German sailing history for decades like hardly anyone before or after him. Without pomp, without big sponsors, in his quiet, clever, planned, thoughtful way. He wrote bestsellers, filled lecture theatres and blew up trade fair stands, always without making a big fuss.
His last appearance at the end of September last year at the Insa boat show in Flensburg he defied cancer, just like his French predecessor and role model, Benard Moitessier. But in the end, which came sooner than expected, the disease he had resisted for months proved to be stronger. Wilfried lived to the age of 83.
But his reputation, his merits and his achievements are immortalised. To this day, his sailing vita remains unrivalled, if not unattainable, in Germany.
Even his first major voyage, from 1966 to 1968, on a keelboat only 7 metres long, still in stages at the time, was a sensation - so much so that it was sometimes doubted instead of being unreservedly celebrated. Yet it was to be only the first of several pioneering achievements that followed - each bigger than the last.
Going to sea alone twice was not enough for him. These were to be non-stop voyages. The first one would have been enough for the sailing Olympics: on 8 September 1984, Wilfried set off from Kiel on the legendary trip around the world, later recorded in the book "The magical route". The boat that carried him became a kind of trademark: the 35-foot aluminium sloop "Kathena nui" built by Dübbel & Jesse.
He also sailed the second non-stop solo with her, this time against the prevailing wind directions. It was an extreme trip that once again demanded everything from him, who was already 60 years old at the time. He spent almost a year travelling from Cuxhaven to Cuxhaven, 343 long days.
For the first time, his fans, who numbered in their hundreds of thousands, were able to follow his journey on the internet. Wilfried had a petrol generator and a fax machine on board his otherwise sparsely equipped boat, which had neither a built-in engine nor a toilet. In this way, he kept his wife Astrid up to date, weather permitting, who in turn wired position reports to YACHT online and posted them on Wilfried's own homepage.
His first non-stop trip from west to east stood alone for more than three decades; it was not until 2019 that Susanne Huber-Curphey succeeded in doing the same to Wilfried. Boris Herrmann followed suit in the 2020-21 Vendée Globe, albeit in just 80 days instead of 271, and on a boat almost twice as big and four times as fast.
The east-west solo "upside down", as Wilfried himself said, remains unrivalled to this day. There are only around a dozen skippers in the world who have attempted and succeeded in doing both non-stop. This alone emphasises Wilfried Erdmann's exceptional sailing skills.
Almost as outstanding as his journeys and his stamina was, of course, his gift for communicating his experiences, be it in his log diaries, his sketches or later in his books, which sold thousands of copies. With them, he built a stage for himself and a bridge for his readers. He took them with him in his inimitable way, sometimes succinctly, soberly, almost brusquely narrating and observing, then again elegiacally. And not just on a long journey! Looking back, his cruises on the North and Baltic Seas, with boats from Dehler or Hanse, with Zugvogel or Hansajolle, seem just as valuable.
His latest work has just been published by Delius Klasing: "Ingeborg and the sea", a late homage to his mother-in-law, Ingeborg von Heister, who herself excelled on the Atlantic. In retrospect, it seems like the manifesto of a sailing hero who never lost sight of his own greatness or his admiration for all the other adventurers at sea.
We will all miss you so much, Wilfried!
