Portrait: Globe 40 skipper Lisa Berger sails around the world from Lake Attersee
Tatjana Pokorny
· 24.02.2026
It is a balmy early summer evening at the end of May 2019 as a young woman in chucks dynamically hurries across the terrace of the Yacht Club Strande on the Kiel Fjord. She is looking for her skipper for the upcoming premiere of the Baltic 500 double-handed Baltic Sea race.
Lisa Berger sinks into a chair and reports that she has just travelled from Austria. Danish mini-skipper Claus Pedersen had used Facebook to find a replacement for his cancelled co-sailor. Lisa bravely volunteered - without a single mile of mini experience. The young woman with the lively big blue eyes travelled 1,000 kilometres from Lake Attersee to Strander Bucht.
"It was my first mini regatta. Oh boy, was I excited!" she recalls almost seven years later during the ongoing Globe40 world regatta. "It was such a huge dream of mine to finally sail a Mini. I remember being scared that I wouldn't like it as much as I had hoped, even though I knew I would love it."
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At the end of the Baltic 500, the then 56-year-old Claus Pedersen paid tribute to his young mini-pupil, saying: "Thank you, Lisa, for being such an inspiring and hard-boiled fellow sailor." She had passed her baptism of fire with fourth place in the double-handed Baltic Sea marathon. It was the starting signal for much more. Above all, a lot of sea.
She knows: "I was completely hooked. The Baltic 500, Claus Pedersen and his Pogo 2 were the perfect introduction for me. That's when it all started for me. The plan to sail the Mini-Transat 2023 was fixed for me."
Lisa Berger's sailing beginnings
Lisa first experienced sailing on the sea as an eleven-year-old in Croatia with her mother Ursula Berger on a family friend's 40-foot boat. Even then, she loved being at the helm. Further holiday trips followed. She obtained her A licence at the age of 14 on Lake Attersee. Her mother was also hooked, having already crossed the North Pacific from Hawaii to San Diego herself and remembers: "We sailed mile after mile. Lisa was simply thrilled right from the start. It was always clear to me: what this girl wants, she'll do."
Lisa was 23 years old when she first encountered the Mini-Transat. Her memory: "The little Minis flew past the Canary Islands. I could see these colourful dots on the horizon. I think that was the moment my dreams began. Since then, I've had the idea of crossing the Atlantic and even sailing around the world in my head."
After the crash test in the Baltic 500, things happened quickly. In the same year, she won the Mixed Offshore European Championship with the first Austrian Mini-Transat soloist Christian Kargl. The golden triumph of the likeable alpine strikers caused quite a stir and gave her courage for her Mini-Transat plans. She got her "mojo" for this from Kargl. She trained in La Rochelle at the Centre Excellence Voile, mastered the qualifying races and experienced "the best time of my life" despite many challenges.
About the Mini to Class 40
Looking back on her mini-solo across the Atlantic, she now realises the mistakes she made back then: "I compared myself far too much with the others, mostly top sailors. Which was stupid, because I had virtually no experience in comparison. But in the final regatta
regatta, the Mini-Transat 2023, I got the bill for that." 45th place was not what the up-and-comer wanted. She struggled with the result and with herself and was frustrated during the race "because it didn't go the way I wanted".
Today she knows: "If I hadn't compared myself to others so much, I could have enjoyed the Transat much more and possibly sailed better." She now looks back with gratitude: "Mini sailing was the perfect offshore primary school for me. I'm so glad that I jumped in at the deep end and did it."
Lisa Berger has thus created a strong career foundation with private supporters, partners and the highly committed Trans-Ocean association. A red and white sticker with the words "Born in 6.50 Classe Mini" is now stuck to her Class40 "Wilson" in Globe40. "I'm super happy that I took the next logical step via my Mini campaign and bought a Class40 to sail around the world and put everything I've learnt into practice!"
She made the decision to tackle the double-handed circumnavigation directly after the mini-transat finish off Guadeloupe in November 2023. "I knew straight away that I wanted to sail around the world."
The intense feeling of happiness is hard-earned
Lisa will never forget how brutal the following 21 months up to the Globe40 start were. "The year from buying the boat to the Globe40 start was the hardest for me so far. With deep lows, but also with the highest high of successful participation as a reward. It's still hard to realise that we really are sailing around the world right now."
The intense feeling of happiness is hard-earned: from the search for financing options to the purchase of the aged Lombard-Akilaria RC2 from 2010 to the elaborate refit carried out by the company itself.
Lisa explains: "I was lucky that I met the right people who lent me the money to buy the boat. I bought 'Wilson' in July 2024. After that, we worked on the boat almost exclusively on dry land until the transfer to the Globe40 marina in Lorient. We completely rebuilt it, took everything out and reinstalled it, redid all the electronics. It was a huge amount of work on a small budget. We had the boat outside in North Wales. It was very cold in winter. But we pulled it off."
Broken keel bolts in the North Atlantic
She was not alone in this mammoth task. At her side was partner Jade Edwards-Leaney. The Welshman and the Innsbruck native met in Les Sables d'Olonne in 2022. He was working as team manager for GGR starter Ian Herbert-Jones on the 'Puffin' mast. She had just returned from the mini classic SAS and was getting her "Mojo" ready for transport. Lisa says: "We trust each other a thousand per cent on the boat and complement each other so well: he has the technical know-how that I learn a lot from and has a solution for every problem on board. I bring the regatta experience. Globe40 with him is the perfect step for everything that's to come."
Three months before the Globe40 launch on 4 September 2025, the duo had to deal with a last-minute shock: At the beginning of June, "Wilson's" keel bolts suddenly broke in the North Atlantic. They only reached A Coruña after 500 anxious nautical miles of running downwind, during which only sinking was ruled out because a lot of buoyancy had to be built into the hull of the Globe40. In hindsight, they see the setback as a blessing in disguise because they were able to eliminate a weak point. "We had the feeling that 'Wilson' had spoken to us: 'Hey, there's something you really need to fix before the start,'" says Lisa.
After fourth place on stage four, now fourth place overall
In the meantime, the prologue from Lorient to Cádiz and four legs via Cape Verde, La Réunion and Sydney to Valparaiso have been sailed. The Valparaiso victory was shared by Team Belgium Ocean Racing-Curium and "Crédit Mutuel" after a photo finish that the race organisers were unable to resolve. Lennart Burke and Melwin Fink will not start again until the sixth and final leg after their retirement on leg three and after the Cape Horn passage of the others with leg five. They want to finish the race in style. Up until the boomerang break, the young Germans had been in the lead of the three superior scow-bug boats and had already beaten each of the two leading teams. "We want to give them another real challenge," announced Burke.
Until then, the fleet will be reduced to seven boats, one of which, the French "Free Dom", had to interrupt the fourth leg due to rudder problems. Following repairs in Sydney, the crew was able to resume the chase on 15 January and aims to reach Valparaiso by 18 February. The starting signal for leg five will then be given there. Lisa Berger and Jade Edwards-Leaney have catapulted themselves to fourth place in the overall standings with fourth place on stage four. The rise is due to their own performance and the setbacks suffered by the competition.
Dream of the next step "Global Solo Challenge"
For the ambitious Berger and Edwards-Leaney, however, there are important goals beyond the sporting result. "Of course we want to win every leg, but for me the Globe40 is also another step on the way to my big dream: I want to sail the Global Solo Challenge non-stop around the world in 2027. It's fun to take one step at a time and surpass yourself."
Lisa and Jade had to do the same when a shroud suddenly swung free on leg four deep in the Southern Ocean. In the pitch dark, Jade climbed into the mast and was able to fasten the stay again. They continued just above the ice edge at latitude 50 degrees south, where the Belgians Benoît Hantzperg and Djemila Tassin set a new 24-hour Class 40 record of 459.78 nautical miles. The Spitzbug boats cannot keep up this pace. Berger and Edwards-Leaney achieve top 24-hour distances of 300 nautical miles. Nevertheless, they will be in seventh heaven when they reach the finish harbour of Lorient.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
