10 years of Malizia: The success story of Boris Herrmann's sailing team - Part 1

When Boris Herrmann arrived in Lorient last week, he was delighted: The remodelling work in the offices at Team Malizia's base camp in the port of La Base was almost complete. In the hangar, Francesca Clapcich's "11th Hour Racing" (ex-"Malizia - Seaexplorer") had just been given a new look. Romain Attanasio, who has also rented a berth and an office under the Malizia roof and sailed the former "Malizia 2" at the last Vendée Globe, popped in for a quick hello.

History continues with the new Malizia building

The large hangar in Lorient's La Base opposite the new Maison des Skippers, where last week just France's America's Cup chasers will also be the home of the new "Malizia 4". Her launch is planned for the end of June. Ten years after the founding of Team Malizia will continue the team's historywhich has characterised the life of Boris Herrmann and his colleagues since 2016.

The soon-to-be-completed new building has now been already commented several times like here. The Koch design, Sister ship of two other boats for Thomas Ruyant and Loïs Berrehaar from the same mould, should carry Germany's best-known sailor and his team to successes in Transats, the Ocean Race Atlantic 2026, The Ocean Race 2027 and the Vendée Globe 2028/2029 by 2030.

Parallel to this the research vessel "Malizia Explorer", which was purchased second-hand only last year exceeded its hopes right from the start with a wide range of missions in its first year. A wide range of projects and initiatives, including the "My Ocean Challenge" children's and youth education campaign developed by Birte Lorenzen-Herrmann and her husband, the Malizia Mangrove Park in the Philippines and other activities make Team Malizia one of the most active and strongest players in the international sailing world a decade after its foundation.

Boris Herrmann remains the Malizia rock

For German sailing, the multi-talented Team Malizia is a lighthouse campaign due to its sporting successes and sustainable work. One that has never been seen before. To have run and financed a sailing team for ten years across such a broad range of topics is an extraordinary overall achievement. A further five years have been secured until 2030.

I believe we are the best organised and most stable team. It will be almost 15 years from 2016 to 2030. It's rare that something like this succeeds." Boris Herrmann

Whether as a sea stormer and high-flyer, as in his first Vendée Globe in 2020/2021, when he only missed out on the podium due to a collision with a fishing vessel on the last night, or as a less fortunate skipper, as in his second Vendée Globe, from which he returned in twelfth place, although he wanted more: Boris Herrmann remains Germany's number one sailor like a rock in the surf.

The interview partner, who is also a favourite on the big German talk shows, was recently a guest on 3after9the "mother of all talk shows". There he described the Vendée Globe as an "adventure without a double bottom" that you couldn't pay to take part in. Herrmann has been fascinated by the race of his life since his youth. He could even imagine taking part several more times, he said at the end of his second solo lap around the world.

The account with the Vendée Globe is still open

You can tell that from the man whose parents took him on weekend trips to the North Sea as an infant. He says he "grew into" his sport during his childhood and youth. At some point, the dream of sailing the Vendée Globe was added: "I really wanted to experience the fascination of this most difficult sailing race."

Boris Herrmann also said on 3nach9: "Now the topic is still not over, because it's not just about making it once, but also... It's also a competition, a race. We want to be at the front with great ambition." Herrmann is more ambitious than it may sometimes seem. He wants to finish on the podium at the Vendée Globe. And ideally win The Ocean Race 2027.

The ambition was already great ten years ago. Shortly before that, in November 2015, he had set off on a Jules Verne record attempt with Francis Joyon and his "Idec Sport" crew. The team narrowly missed the record with the third-fastest time in sailing history. Boris Herrmann remembers talking to Malizia team co-founder Pierre Casiraghi during the record attempt about what project they could tackle next.

In search of the right project

He explains: "We had considered whether to start up an old used Orma or do something with the A-Class. We had rejected Extreme Sailing because I thought that these show races wouldn't be so much fun for Pierre as an owner-driver. We had also considered chartering a TP52. We also always wanted to do a double-handed race, maybe sail the Giraglia as a pair."

Boris Herrmann still vividly remembers the subsequent phone call with Pierre Casiraghi after the Jules Verne attempt. "I remember it clearly: I was sitting in a café in Hamburg's Schanze neighbourhood. He rang me and said: 'Can you come to Monaco today?' Typical Piere. Hang on, I'm looking. The next flight leaves in two hours. Okay, I'll come." Boris Herrmann did indeed fly to Monaco a day later.

There, Pierre Casiraghi first surprised his German sailing companion with an outing alongside "a young blonde guy". Boris Herrmann introduced himself and told him what he was doing. His counterpart nodded appreciatively. Herrmann then discreetly took a photo of himself and the person he was talking to, sent it home to his wife and asked: "Look who I'm travelling with. Who is that?" Birte Lorenzen-Herrmann's answer came promptly: "That's Nico Rosberg."

First karting with Nico Rosberg, then founding the Malizia team

The Finnish Formula 1 driver and Pierre Casiraghi first went to the karting track where Nico Rosberg was training. "Pierre was my training buddy on the track. The two of them thundered around the track in racing karts and I stood on the sidelines, watching and talking to the technicians. Afterwards, we went to the tourist kart track next door together, where it was like a bumper car around the track. Two of us tried to push Nico off, but of course he totally distracted us," says Boris Herrmann.

The karting fun was the cheerful overture to a memorable day in February 2016, as it was immediately followed by a meeting at the Yacht Club de Monaco. In Herrmann's memory, Piere Casiraghi simply said: "So, now we have a meeting with Bernard and Isabelle." At the time, Herrmann did not realise that it was the Yacht Club's Managing Director Bernard D'Alessandri and Head of Marketing and Communications Isabelle Andrieux.

The four of them sat around the table. Pierre Casiraghi announced the purchase of a GC32 racing catamaran, with the yacht club covering the running costs and press work. "And you, Boris, you have to manage it," Casiraghi briefly noted before saying this sentence: "It's called Malizia." This is how spontaneous and determined the story of Team Malizia began a decade ago.

In the same boat as Boris: Pierre Casiraghi and the Yacht Club de Monaco

Boris Herrmann's new sailing project saw the christening of his brand-new GC32 catamaran on Lake Garda on 16 May 2016. In addition to Casiraghi and Herrmann, French America's Cup helmsman Seb Col and British multihull specialists Richard Mason and Adam Piggott formed the crew for the series. Team Malizia finished eighth at the premiere. They competed in the series for two seasons. "I have fond memories of that," said Boris Herrmann today.

Pierre Casiraghi knew from the beginning of their friendship that Boris Herrmann had his sights set on the Vendée Globe in the future. In 2015, the son of Caroline of Monaco had already visited a Kiel Week and said in interviews: "Boris has this dream and I would like to support it if I can." And he did.

The foundation of the Malizia team with a professional structure began with the GC32 campaign a year later. "Especially as the Yacht Club de Monaco then also became the first partner in the Imoca project," Boris Herrmann traces the development. He took delivery of his first used Imoca, the former "Gitana 16", in Lorient in March 2017. At the time, it was upgraded with foils from Isabelle Joschke.

20 years of work for an "overnight success"

The story that followed at Boris Herrmann's first Vendée Globe in 2020/2021 is familiar to every sailing and Herrmann fan. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Germany's historic first Vendée Globe participant served up an exciting new adventure to a rapidly growing audience. In countless press reports and in the Herrmann book "Nonstop" you can read about the dramatic end, in which a collision with a fishing vessel on the last night before arrival cost the podium place.

His fame grew in leaps and bounds during this time. In retrospect, however, Boris Herrmann also finds it important not to forget the two decades before the Malizia team was founded: "The 20 years before that with the hustle and bustle, all the sailing, the constant attempts to find small sponsors here and there, that was all an important part of what followed."

A friend, Dirk Mennewisch, once told him a saying that Boris Herrmann likes to quote: "It takes 20 years of hard work to create an overnight success." Boris Herrmann was 34 years old when he founded Team Malizia. Ten years later, he can now look back on a flourishing team history in a sponsorship landscape that has not become any easier.

When the crêperie in Larmor-Plage became Herrmann's living room

"For example, our research vessel 'Explorer' is a bit of an overnight success. We bought the ship, it went off, super well. Great press coverage, ZDF on board. A documentary. And now a book is being written. It's great, but it wouldn't be like this without this network and the 20 arduous years beforehand, in which everything progressed very slowly," says Boris Herrmann. He also remembers that his first Imoca campaign was initially "totally underfunded".

Pierre Casiraghi was not a sponsor, the Yacht Club de Monaco took care of the running costs. In an addendum to the GC32 contract, there was also the addition that the yacht club would also take over the charter and insurance for the Imoca.

"So we had the boat, but no running budget. My salary was paid through the GC campaign. I was able to use it to afford a car, which I then used to live in here on Kernevel beach in Larmor-Plage. There's also the crêperie Boo't A Boo, where I ate every evening. That's why there's now a Boris Herrmann crêpe there. That was my living room," says Boris Herrmann in a conversation at the Malizia beer table, an original from the year it was founded.

Lorient's La Base: a harbour full of memories

Two of these reliable team companions, together with benches, stand on a few narrow wooden planks on the roof of Team Malizia's headquarters in Lorient. From there, the view is of the docks of La Base and a stretch of harbour. For Boris Herrmann, it is full of memories. You can talk to him up here about Team Malizia's history and his own career. Meanwhile, a few metres further on, his dog Lilly has positioned herself so cleverly on the flat black roof that only her head is in the Breton sun in the fresh spring temperatures, her body in the shade.