The Ocean Race: Launched one year ago today - what remains of the 14th edition
Tatjana Pokorny
· 15.01.2024
A team experience like no other. An opulent sailing adventure over six months, seven legs and 32,000 nautical miles. A powerful ocean arena with sea heroes to root for. A drama in three acts. A socially powerful event that leaves no one behind. The 14th Ocean Race was all that - and a whole lot of sea. It all depends on the perspective from which you look back on the recently completed ocean marathon.
Boris Herrmann said after his fifth circumnavigation that it had changed his life. He is referring to the team experience that he enjoyed so much. The Hamburg-based founder and skipper of Team Malizia had previously circumnavigated the globe not only solo or in pairs, but also with a larger crew on Francis Joyon's record-breaking Idec Sport in 2015. This time, however, he was the spiritual father of his own boat and team leader of the Malizians. The feeling of a successful mission fulfils him.
This race around the world was bigger than the small, albeit fine fleet of five Imocas had signalled at the start. And also bigger than Boris had imagined before the race began. At the end of the sea marathon, the man with the staying power praised his team: "We are all very sad that the race is coming to an end. It was like a big family growing together. It was a great adventure to sail around the world together and discover it. I now have the virus inside me and won't be able to get rid of it any time soon. We want to be back again."
Team Malizia reached an audience of millions in the Ocean Race
Boris Herrmann had set his team five goals ahead of the 50th anniversary of the race, which was launched in 1973/1974 as the Whitbread Round the World Race: "We want to play a role in the sport. We want to get around the world, inspire the public, sensitise children to the oceans and their health and collect CO2 data for science." By the end, the Malizians had ticked off the list point by point.
In fact, Team Malizia has achieved more, awakened the old love of German Ocean Race fans and taken it to a new dimension. The Malizia press team recorded over 7.5 million page views on YouTube alone. In total, the Ocean Race organisers estimate around twelve million YouTube views. A total of 451,000 minutes of moving and moving Malizia images were viewed via YouTube alone, most of which were produced in a wonderfully refreshing and entertaining way by on-board reporter Antoine Auriol. The self-proclaimed "Flight Captain" clearly had fun on board with his fellow sailors, bringing the audience very close to their sailing heroes. The company's own film crew, ARD, ZDF, Eurosport and others produced reports and documentaries that were well worth seeing. Time and again, the Ocean Race with Boris as a powerful ambassador made it into the main German news and other mainstream programmes.
Huge fan base in Germany- 15th edition with start in Hamburg and finish off Kiel?
Team Malizia was able to gain 26,500 new subscribers for its own video channel. The authentic live broadcasts realised by hand and mobile phone with team director Holly Cova as a talented commentator also played a big part in this. While the Ocean Race organisers were still collating their media figures shortly after the races, the trend had long been clear: the largest audience for this race around the world came from Germany. This was also confirmed by the 120,000 or so people on and around the Kiel Fjord, who turned the fly-by into the fan summit of round-the-world sailing. French Imoca class president Antoine Mermod enthused: "I can tell you that the sailors have never seen so many people. They were really, really impressed by the fly-by in Kiel. They would be happy to go back there and maybe stay there for a bit ..." Kiel and the German fans passed their maturity test as a potential stage harbour for the 15th Ocean Race with flying colours. Boris Herrmann seized the opportunity and threw a bold idea into the ring: "We could start in Hamburg next time and finish in front of Kiel."
With quantitative restrictions, the Imoca class also enjoyed a successful Ocean Race kick-off. Only five boats turned up for the start of the new era. There have never been fewer in the Ocean Race. The mini field was due to the planning uncertainties after the coronavirus period and the switch to futuristic foilers, which were previously not known as crew boats but were whipped across the seas by soloists and double-handed crews. With the Imocas and the relationship with their class association, which has gone from flirtation to love, the Ocean Race management has obviously backed the right racehorses. The Imocas have come to stay.
However, holding on to the VO65 yachts once again proved to be one of the few mistakes. "With all due respect to the management, who made many great decisions, it was a big mistake to keep the 65s alive right from the start. It split the fleet and diluted the momentum," was Boris Herrmann's unusually clear judgement.
The end of the VO65s
Because not enough 65er campaigns were able to find sufficient sponsorship for the entire round-the-world race, it was necessary to reschedule long before the start. In the end, six VO65s started the Sprint Cup, which consisted of just three legs and had little to do with a round-the-world race. This was tragic for campaigns such as the WindWhisper Racing Team, which won all harbour races and all three legs. Boris was not the only one who would have liked to see the team sailing under the Polish flag as the sixth boat in their own field. He said: "They could have put together a strong Imoca campaign. And they would have done it even if there had only been one class from the start."
The manageable Imoca field, on the other hand, harboured a mathematical problem: there were no big leaps and changes to be made in the points classification. However, the top teams quickly crystallised. The pre-start favourites from the US team 11th Hour Racing opened the third Ocean Race attempt of their skipper Charlie Enright weakly at first with a lot of broken material. Instead, the Swiss team Holcim - PRB with its dynamic skipper Kevin Escoffier took three wins in a row.
The Cape Horn crown, however, was decisively snatched by Boris Herrmann. In front of the legendary rock on the tip of the Chilean Isla Hornos, Team Malizia celebrated the magnificent summit assault despite Rosie Kuiper's concussion. The Dutchwoman had been catapulted from her bunk by a monster wave shortly beforehand. Boris Herrmann's favourite memory of his own Ocean Race premiere is the mountain festival on the Cape Horn King's Stage, which was not rewarded with points.
Mast breakages overshadow The Ocean Race and raise questions
In retrospect, however, the summit happiness tasted even sweeter for two reasons: Earlier, in the early stages of the third leg, a crack in the mast of the "Malizia - Seaexplorer" had almost forced the Herrmann crew to turn back. However, thanks to heroic repairs at dizzying heights by Will Harris and Rosie Kuiper, the German "strong-wind rocket" was able to continue its irresistible run and finish with victory on the historically longest leg at 12,750 nautical miles.
Boris Herrmann would like to see another scoring gate for the "symbolic place" of Cape Horn in the future. He says: "It is a major turning point, which is followed by a completely separate leg to the north on the Newport course." The organisers are discussing these and other changes for the 15th edition of The Ocean Race. After the leg along the three capes, for many the soul and heart of the race, fortunes took an extreme turn for three teams in the second half of the race.
Two mast breaks shook the Ocean Race world on leg four from Itajaí to Newport. First the rig on "Holcim - PRB" failed, then Team Guyot's fate seemed sealed in a 60-knot storm where the "Titanic" once sank. The mast breakage rate rose to 40 per cent within two weeks. Critics cried out that the boats built for soloists and double-handers were not suitable for the hard pushing by four-person crews. But the sailors themselves gave the all-clear: in the case of the still young "Holcim - PRB", a piece of equipment had failed. In the case of "Guyot", "the disaster", as co-skipper Stanjek put it, was probably due to excessive loads and possibly recently broken bulkheads on the eight-year-old boat.
Third attempt at the summit- the success story of 11th Hour Racing
For one team, leg four was a steep uphill climb: 11th Hour finally did what Bristol, Rhode Island-born skipper Charlie Enright, his experienced British navigator Simon "Sifi" Fisher and their team set out to do on their sixth lap around the world: win! With the original foils back under the hull, the crew turned up the heat in the way Enright likes to open his eyes when he's joking around in front of the camera, but still means business. "Charlie is like a comic character from a cartoon, just very funny, but also very ambitious," says Boris Herrmann about his conqueror from New England.
The team of 38-year-old Ocean Race endurance racer Enright had the longest preparation time. No other team had as much ocean race experience as 11th Hour Racing. After material stress, rudder and foil problems and a huge tear in the mainsail in the Southern Ocean, Charlie and his three "angels" started the race to catch up with a home win on the Newport course. They then won the double scored transatlantic leg back to Europe and the sprint from Aarhus via Kiel to The Hague in the Netherlands.
Who could stop this team? Only Team Holcim - PRB still had a chance to do so with a two-point deficit before the final sprint to Genoa. The predominantly French "Swiss" around replacement skipper Benjamin Schwartz, who replaced Kevin Escoffier from stage six, wanted to attack once more. However, this came to nothing - threefold: a momentous crash, only third place on the last leg, on which "Holcim - PRB", after leading for a long time, was passed to the back by Team Malizia and Team Biotherm in the final metres in the doldrums, as well as the jury decision in Genoa, shattered Holcim - PRB XL's dreams of victory.
Dramatic finale: The Ocean Race is decided by the jury for the first time
It was a fateful scene that shook the entire Ocean Race family on 15 June. The crash caused by Team Guyot with 11th Hour Racing's "Malama" turned into a major drama off The Hague. Where days earlier the Dutch royal couple had so warmly congratulated their compatriot Rosalin Kuiper on board "Malizia - Seaexplorer", the collision now caused rupture and tears.
17 minutes after the start, Team Guyot, already tormented by two leg tasks as well as hull delamination, mast breakage and the most difficult comeback tests, dealt itself the final knockout blow. It collided with "Malama" because neither helmsman Ben Dutreux nor his navigator Sébastien Simon saw the American Imoca in time. Her bow drilled into the aft port side of the hull and into the interior of the "Malama". It was only by luck that no one was injured. It quickly became clear that neither team would be able to sail the final leg.
A little later, 11th Hour Racing was able to celebrate the happy ending after the shock. The jury granted the US request for compensation, catapulting Charlie and his allies to the Ocean Race throne. "Nobody could have imagined how this race would go. I have worked ten years for this victory and achieved it with a fantastic team," said Charles, the first American skipper to be crowned in the Ocean Race. His bitter tears in The Hague turned into tears of joy.
Vendée Globe, Ocean Race Europe & Co.: What happens next
And what else remains on course for the future? Certainly the 24-hour world record for monohulls, which "Holcim - PRB" set on leg four with a fabulous 640.48 nautical miles - the benchmark and the incentive for future generations. Although Boris Herrmann's "Malizia - Seaexplorer" was able to surpass this only a little later and log 641.13 nautical miles, this record was not recognised due to the small difference to the previous record set by "Holcim - PRB". Nevertheless, Malizia's core team of Boris Herrmann, Will Harris, Rosalin Kuiper and navigator "The Brain" Nico Lunven celebrated this best performance, the Cape Horn triumph, the brilliant Kiel fly-by, two stage wins and bronze in the overall standings in the Bay of Genoa, arm in arm, splashing in unison on the red foil of the yacht that had carried them around the world so brilliantly. The German Imoca, which also won in light winds in the end, was the only boat in the fleet to complete all seven legs in full length without any retirements. For many fans, "Malizia - Seaexplorer" is therefore the queen of the 14th The Ocean Race after 97 days, 12 hours, 32 minutes and 16 seconds.
Skipper Boris Herrmann will set off on her for the 10th Vendée Globe on 10 November 2024. Starting from Les Sables-d'Olonne, 40 single-handed sailors will take on the challenge of sailing around the world alone and non-stop. Whoever succeeds here will rise to the Olympus of the offshore sailing scene. At Boris Herrmann's premiere in 2020, the world was in lockdown and followed the Hamburg native in particular. Now he is setting off again, he and his boat are expected to achieve great things after a successful end to the 2023 season with Transat Jacques Vabre and Retour à la Base. The Hamburg native is also expecting a pair of new foils at the beginning of April. The current appendages of "Malizia - Seaexplorer" are around ten per cent smaller than the class rules allow. The new foils built by CDK are to follow on from the interim solution after foil damage in Alicante, so they will be optimised for the ship again and also make use of the maximum foil size of the class rules.
When the Vendée Globe is followed by a new cycle of the Ocean Race, the next generation of Imocas is likely to be born. Because in 2025, the Ocean Race Europe will be the dress rehearsal for the next big race around the world. The Imocas are already set as a class for this and will also contest the 15th edition of The Ocean Race in 2026/27 with the largest possible starting field. However, the future of the race is not certain; the next edition is neither firmly scheduled nor even confirmed. However, there will certainly be no boredom in the tough and spectacular Imoca circus in the coming years.
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Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
