Happy Birthday, Boris Herrmann: "A ship like this has definitely never been built before!"

Founded in 2016 with Pierre Casiraghi and initially driven by Director Holly Cova and a small handful of close colleagues, your team has grown enormously over the past year. How do you see the development?

We now have 31 permanent members from eleven nations and many other direct and indirect employees. We have strong partners in the Yacht Club de Monaco, EFG, Zurich, Kühne+Nagel, MSC, Hapag Lloyd and Schütz. The team has grown young and healthy. We are now a real racing team with structures, office, hangar, containers and everything that goes with it.

Would you have dreamed of this ten years ago?

To be honest, my horizon is shifting every day. A while ago, I thought we had to stay lean as a team. Now, strengthening in some areas was important and the right thing to do. The great thing about this five-year campaign is that we have room for manoeuvre in terms of when and how much money we invest. The current boat and construction phase is more intensive. Everything is progressing well, we are not wasting any time and are well positioned.

Will your role change over the course of the campaign?

Sure. At the moment, I'm focussing on the team, the "big picture" and above all on building the boat. Once the boat is ready, I will concentrate on optimising it, sailing, preparing for the Route du Rhum, the first transatlantic regatta in November, and setting up for The Ocean Race.

You've been without a boat of your own for almost a year and a half, after the "Seaexplorer" was sold following the Vendée Globe. How are things progressing with the new build in Vannes, France?

We are on schedule, albeit only just. We still have our sights set on 19 July at 10 a.m. to get the boat ready to sail. So we have no time to lose.

You have announced a "radically different boat". What will it look like?

Our new boat will look much rounder, both lengthways and crossways. It looks a bit like a banana, as round as a child would draw a boat. Overall, it looks bigger and fatter than the "Seaexplorer". It has more freeboard, the hull is higher and the deck is larger. It is more like a tractor for off-road use and less like a Formula 1 car racing over a flat track.

Because the sea is often stormy and not always ideally smooth when sailing around the world ...

Exactly. A ship like this has definitely never been built before.

How much Boris Herrmann is in the new boat?

Already a lot! I wanted a boat with a round bow. The only question is how extreme you make it and how much you let yourself be talked out of it. In the end, we tried to brew up the ideal overall set with the team of designers and constructors in phone calls, conferences or with up to 15 people at the table along internal and external studies and found a common line. You have to make a lot of compromises in the process.

For example?

The big long-term compromise is the balance between the desire for maximum speed potential combined with the boat's robustness and all-round capabilities in all conditions. The bow shape is strongly inspired by the Class 40. In addition, we have to follow the rules of the Imoca class. The result is a boat that is perhaps less pleasing to the eye than its predecessor. It is a boat where everything is subordinate to the purpose.

The calculations for such a new building are largely theoretical in nature, based on empirical values and assumptions made on the computer. Is there also a risk of being wrong?

From today's perspective, our first planned start at the Défi Azimut regatta at the end of September could perhaps be described as D-Day. We'll see if we've done our work properly. If Romain Attanasio is faster than us with the old "Seaexplorer", then we've done something wrong. That's always a worry at the back of our minds.

The popularity of the Vendée Globe continues to grow and the Imoca boatbuilding market is booming like never before. Seven new boats are being built this year, and there will be 15 by 2023. Is there espionage among the teams like in the America's Cup?

No, that is impossible and does not correspond to the spirit of the race. The big teams run their projects in isolation and for themselves. The three in Vannes, which are being built at the Multiplast shipyard and to which we belong, also work separately from each other.

You collected marine data for scientific climate research during your Vendée Globe première. Will the new boat also have a mini-laboratory on board?

The tried-and-tested laboratory is sailing again one-to-one. It has done its job very reliably. We were the largest data collector in the world during the Vendée Globe and are proud of it. The mounts for the laboratory have already been installed.

How great is your longing to finally take part in a regatta on your own keel again?

It's here, and I'm looking forward to it. The first regatta with the new boat will come sooner than we think ...

Your team slogan "A Race we must win" refers primarily to the climate fight and your contributions to preserving the health of the oceans. What sporting goals do you have for the upcoming major missions?

I hope that we can fulfil our potential. We have one of the biggest teams and strong partners. Of course, we don't want to be left behind. But I can't pin success on just one race. We want to aim for the top five again and try to be among the front runners. On the other hand, all the teams have been working hard. Apivia and Charal have invested 30,000 to 35,000 hours of design work, almost twice as much as we have with around 20,000. By comparison, around 150,000 hours of design work go into the yachts in the America's Cup. Our team director Holly Cova put it well at the sports gala in Hamburg: "We want to do well in sport, but we have an even bigger task to fulfil.