For Germany's sailing star Boris Herrmann, the new year will bring a new boat and his long-awaited regatta comeback. He has only competed in a major regatta once in 2021 after the thrilling Vendée Globe final in January. Germany's flagship sailor turned up with his team in his home waters for Kieler Woche. In addition, TV appearances, honours, environmental commitments, four published books, the successful expansion of his sponsor family, the expansion of the team to around 50 members and, above all, his new building project in France have kept him very busy. Despite a season without his own racing yacht, it was a breathless year! Now the 40-year-old from Hamburg can hardly wait for the new year and his comeback on the water.
Three wishes for the new year
Three wishes is what sailing professional, author and family man Boris Herrmann has for the turn of the year and for 2022.The most important"I hope that our new boat will be under a good star. I'm also a little superstitious," he says. He is thinking of boats and skippers like "Charal" and Jérémie Beyou, whose new boat broke down shortly after its christening and later forced the French Vendée Globe favourite to turn back, undergo repairs and a lonely and hopeless catch-up race with major technical problems in the early stages of the race.
The new Imoca yacht for Herrmann's racing team, Team Malizia, is being built in France. The second half of the construction period has already begun. The boat is scheduled for completion in June 2022 and will start testing and training immediately.YACHT editor Andreas Fritsch visited Boris Herrmann and his team in France and was able to provide readers with exclusive insights into the project, many of which are still top secret, at the end of the year. You can read the exciting report and an interview with Boris Herrmann in YACHT 2, on newsstands from 5 January.
Wish two: Herrmann is hoping for more participants for the first of his two planned summit races: The Ocean Race 2023. The classic event, which began in 1973/74 as the Whitbread Round the World Race, is still in the doldrums. One year before the start, which has been postponed to January 2023 due to the pandemic, the most important team race around the world lacks a veritable fleet. Although dozens of teams have registered, only a few have confirmed their participation so far. In its 14th edition, the Ocean Race team race will be held in two boat divisions: the tried-and-tested Volvo Ocean 65 yachts and the booming Imoca class known from the Vendée Globe. Herrmann wants to attack here with his team Malizia and a new boat. Officially, however, with 11th Hour Racing and his campaign, only two Imoca teams are registered and fully financed. Rumours and hopes are swirling around many other racing teams and well-known names such as Vendée Globe winner Yannick Bestaven, Kevin Escoffier and others.
"It will be a bit of a fateful year for this big race"
Herrmann remains optimistic: "Five Imocas would be great. Then we would have a race. It will be a bit of a fateful year for this great race, which has to make it out of the crisis." He adds, "We would sail the course around the world just as well without The Ocean Race." Team Malizia needs the more than 30,000 nautical miles of the Ocean Race course in stages around the world to test and optimise the new build for the skipper's second Vendée Globe solo in 2024/25.
There was good news for German fans of the Ocean Race shortly before the end of the year: A fly-by is planned in Kiel in June 2023 for the penultimate leg of the round-the-world race, which will start in Aarhus, Denmark, and finish in The Hague, Netherlands. The regatta field will sail around a turning mark on Kiel's inner fjord. "That's a nice and important message," says Herrmann. The announcement brought back memories of the only German victory in the history of the race: in 2002, the "illbruck" won the stage race around the globe. More than a hundred thousand spectators celebrated the triumph at the finish in Kiel.
Herrmannsthird wish has already been fulfilled: He was and is not alone at sea, 15,000 kilometres away from his home port of Hamburg, somewhere in the grey Southern Ocean over the holidays and the turn of the year, as he was last year. This year, he is reunited with his wife Birte Lorenzen-Herrmann, their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Marie-Louise and the family dog Lilli. "The first Christmas with my daughter and my own little family was wonderful. Malou is lovely and already talks a lot." For Boris Herrmann, the new year, the boat christening in summer 2022 and his comeback on the water are just around the corner
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
