"Kathena nui": The sailing boat that took Wilfried Erdmann around the world
Marc Bielefeld
· 03.08.2024
This is what understatement at sea looks like. No shiny lacquer dress. No polished brass to show off. No gleaming instrument panels, no leather-covered steering wheel. The first thing that catches the eye is a long wooden tiller on which the coarse chain of the wind steering system snaps into place. The simple cockpit, teak washed away by wind and salt water. No, no vanity. This yacht does not adorn itself. Nor does it need to. The "Kathena nui" is the most famous sailing ship in the Republic. She doesn't need a show.
So this is what a yacht looks like that a skipper can trust with his life. Even when the devil comes. When the hurricane comes at him and he loses it in the Agulhas Current just before the Cape of Good Hope. When such brutal waves and gusts batter the ship that the mast is first pressed horizontally into the sea to leeward, then shortly afterwards to windward. And when life on board consists of lying down on the cabin floor, clinging on and praying. Chaos sea, death zone. Where there is only one option left and no choice: rely on this ship and trust it to take all the murderous blows.
Even at first glance, it looks like it was made to endure such extremes. There is this long-suffering hull, bare aluminium. This famous silver, without paint. No polished weld seams even on deck. They are wrinkled, strong. There are the thick shrouds, the massive jibs. There is the narrow entrance from the bridge deck to the companionway. Two metal grab rails instead of a large sprayhood. Submarine character. No, not a boat for dainty regattas - a boat for other scales.
Wilfried Erdmann sailed the "Kathena nui" around the world twice
This is what a sailing boat looks like when it departs from Germany and docks there again. The whole world in between, all the great capes at the ends of the world. Without stopping, without anchoring once. Only the sea. Only leaden lulls. And only harsh weather, the stormy sea turning to sandpaper. And loneliness. For weeks, for months.
So this is it, the only yacht in the world that has sailed non-stop around the globe in both directions in such an intrepid manner. Once turning eastwards through the southern seas, then the torture to the west. A hellish ride against all prevailing winds. She travelled 30,183 nautical miles in one go on her first mad dash, from Kiel to Kiel in 1984/85. Sixteen years later, the next 31263 nautical miles, from Cuxhaven to Cuxhaven.
No big words are needed. A few figures say everything there is to say: 271 and 343 - that's how many days at sea this boat has spent aft without interruption. That's almost two years non-stop on the open oceans.
The sailing boat returns to the water in 2016
It is mid-April 2016 on the Schlei, and the "Kathena nui" has been back in the water for two hours - apart from a brief interlude last summer, after 15 years on land! Since sailing non-stop around the world against the wind, she had been moored next to her owner's house in Goltoft. Then Astrid and Wilfried Erdmann took her into the water briefly during the 2015 season, a stay at the shipyard, a few trial runs. But now things are getting serious.
As soon as the mast is up, Wilfried Erdmann walks over his sailing boat with a benevolent watchful eye. He strolls across the foredeck and disappears into the cabin. This is how many owners behave these days, and a casual observer will not recognise anything exciting or extravagant in this scene. A skipper is getting his ship ready, an inconspicuous ten-metre yacht, one of the smaller ones. She is straightforward, rather rough. Already a little older. A cruising yacht without luxury or fuss. Doesn't even have a furling jib. Doesn't even have wooden handrails. All metal. Certainly some kind of loner's boat.
Anyone without a clue might assume that. Anyone who doesn't know that this ship has rounded Cape Horn twice, almost rolled over in waves ten or fifteen metres high, but has withstood the greatest imaginable ordeals without a murmur. Anyone who doesn't know all this might assume that most other owners would have their treasures craned back into the hall immediately at the mere thought of such brutalities.
The "Kathena nui" is inconspicuous
More understatement is simply not possible. The sailing boat only shows its qualities to connoisseurs. Two aft stays, two back stays, cutter stay. The hatch covers to the sail load and aft look like those on a merchant ship, double bolted, completely watertight. "If one of the hatches falls on your fingers, your fingers are flat," says Astrid Erdmann. However, the ship can stand upside down under water without taking on much water.
The priorities are absolutely clear. The Lady is not made to compete in a pageant. She is built to be strong. There's the massive Aries self-steering system. The large sheer working deck. Everything designed for reliability and function. Not a single tripping hazard on deck, no frills. Consistently designed for practicality. Fast, safe handling in all conditions. Even in roaring winds and raging seas, the sails can be reefed or changed ten times during the day and ten times at night. Even by one person alone.
The "Kathena nui" keeps its essential secrets below deck, its powerful innards. In fact, it is built to last. Five aluminium bulkheads, two of which are welded watertight. No passage from the cabin to the foredeck. Everything is watertight. At the time, eleven headsails alone were stored forward in the sail hold. The smallest was two square metres, home-sewn. No, you don't want to know how much wind is used to set something like that. A handkerchief.
Erdmann's "Kathena nui" is 10.60 metres long and weighs 5.4 tonnes
There is the ice reinforcement at the bow. 50 millimetre wide profiled frames on six millimetre thick floor beams. The invisible inner aluminium skeleton. Above this, six millimetre thick sheet metal in the underwater hull. On the outside, the bare hull made of Kaiser aluminium, which protects itself. Short keel, 10.60 metres long, 3.25 metres wide. Draft 1.70 metres, 5.4 tonnes heavy - or rather light. These are the key data of a workhorse, an exceedingly brave ship that is lying there in the Baltic Sea and still seems to be saying: "Cape Horn? Let's go for all I care."
It wouldn't be too surprising if the sailing boat "Kathena nui" actually started to speak. Because this ship has a special aura about it. In the years when it lay on land behind the house under the tarpaulin, deprived of its function and purpose, people occasionally came by and asked in all seriousness if they could touch the ship. Just to touch it once.
So it's high time that instead of fetish worship, a little common sense returned. Time for the "Kathena nui" to show what it can really do again. Mr and Mrs Erdmann want to head north. To Skagen, and from there 500 nautical miles across the North Sea to the Faroe Islands and on to Scotland.
The sailing boat gets going again
For most sailors, this is anything but a short summer trip. The sea can get pretty rough up there. Wilfried Erdmann has just turned 76 years old. But what can he say? He says nothing. He stands on deck and needs no words. You can sense that the sailing boat "Kathena nui" and he have a kind of affinity. It's hard to imagine that anyone else has experienced anywhere near such a wealth of intense hours with his boat. They seem to be welded together.
For Erdmann, the upcoming cruise must be a kind of drive from the front door, one trip for cake and back. His wife Astrid says: "My damn seasickness - but once again he couldn't be dissuaded from our trip."
The fact that the two are able to set off on a predictably gruelling journey in high spirits is primarily thanks to the most important feature of their "Kathena nui". "I trust the ship completely," says Wilfried Erdmann. "I gained this deep trust on the first non-stop voyage, and it made me think about the subsequent journey against the wind in the first place."
How nice, trust. An almost old-fashioned virtue, but one that rises effortlessly above any super-modern chart plotter, one that counts more than any fancy trimming device, which is everything when the going gets really tough. Not off Lyø. But in the toughest waters in the world.
Every reader was on board "Kathena nui"
The first step onto the sailing boat is accompanied by a feeling of awe, like entering a sanctuary. The feeling goes straight to your stomach. In truth, every sailor who is not completely ignorant has been on board here several times - reading, travelling with us in spirit, suffering with us. In this sense, Wilfried Erdmann was never alone during his stormy voyages, even though he may have been lonely out there at sea. She hardly shakes when you step on board. No creaking deck, no hollow rattling like on many GRP decks. The famous round bilge lies hard as aluminium in the water.
Hardly anything has changed since her two great voyages into the annals of sailing history. One of the small, tattered black flags still hangs from the backstay. A trick that Erdmann learnt from Bernard Moitessier, the great Frenchman. He could still make out this dark piece of fabric in the grey of the night through the porthole in the cabin. He could see how the wind blew in during the night storm - and how the flag lost four finger widths in the gale off South Africa.
Down in the cabin, the two compasses are still attached, for constant course control, when lying down, when cooking in the swaying. The knives hang there in their sheaths, always within easy reach so that he doesn't have to search for long in a storm. Mrs Astrid's silhouette, the wooden carving from the South Seas, still hangs there today. On the two big voyages, they were lucky charms, Erdmann's faith keepers out there in the void.
On board the "Kathena nui" everything is as it used to be
It's light down here, invitingly bright and cosy, not a dark mahogany cave. It wouldn't be good for the head either, when five months of fighting have been completed and there are still six to go. Far away from everything. Down in the Arctic Ocean, alone. A dark chamber harbours the risk of depression. White, on the other hand, brightens the soul, light means life. The ship is also optimised for its purpose in this respect.
Erdmann built everything himself back in 1984, when he was the first German to set off on a non-stop trip around the world. Grey upholstery, grey carpet. Open dog bunks. No saloon table, no sea toilet. The two small and simple Dietz petroleum lamps, knotted together next to the chart table and galley. Simple Optimus paraffin cooker. Everything is spartan, beautifully spartan. Opposite, five large letters are emblazoned under the lamp on the chart table: TODAY. A silent reminder to yourself not to put anything off, to do everything immediately. Washing, repairs, keeping a logbook. In other words: persevere, don't give up. Don't drown in melancholy and lethargy.
Wilfried Erdmann has built many things himself
Erdmann spent weeks leaning against the scuffed blue edge of the chart table, writing, navigating and keeping a logbook. It is still scuffed, not painted over. In contrast, the curtains, hand-sewn from Tahitian cloth, look fresh. Then the notes above the chart table catch the eye. Twelve long, vertical strips of adhesive tape are still used to record in pencil all of the distances travelled on the last long voyage around the world. 147. 142. 141. 133. 42. 63. 52. Silent traces of the exertions.
Who would ever want to remove these insignia? There are 343 of these numbers, one for each day. Numbers that make your mouth water in horror and remove some of the colour from your face. In the end, the bottom line is this famous total: 31362! nautical miles! Against the prevailing currents and winds.
Not far from the etmallists, in a light-coloured cupboard, rests the old box with the sextant, labelled "Headwind in paradise". Next to it, handwritten notes are stuck to the cabin wall, scribbles, slogans, mnemonics. "Astrid, be strong!" - "It took Chay Blyth 80 days from Tasmania to the Cape of Good Hope." - "Current Lemaire Strait, 1 hour after high tide is best." Things like that. Little soul-brighteners that are probably necessary when someone is alone at sea for a year. Mnemonic bridges against going mad. There are also logs and BBC frequencies. Everything is still there. The sailing boat "Kathena nui" is a floating piece of history. A museum under sail - and all in its original condition.
Talisman for good luck
Even the hammer is still on board. The hammer with the red head that shipyard boss Uwe Dübbel used back then in Norderney to flatten the last of the aluminium before the start. He gave it to Wilfried Erdmann as a gift, as a talisman. The one-handed man soon found a good use for it. He held the hammer in his hands whenever a marathon watch at the tiller was imminent. If the tool cracked loudly on the floorboards of the cockpit, it was a reminder to him: "Erdmann, don't fall asleep! Keep sailing!"
The "Kathena nui" has only been slightly upgraded for this next trip. The most important innovation: a small diesel inboard engine. On Erdmann's long voyages, such an engine would have been ballast at best, waste; he wouldn't have been able to use it sensibly anyway. Now the 14 hp engine is to help in the doldrums, during manoeuvres in the harbours. His wife had insisted on having it installed. Going on another cruise? Okay, but: "Not without the engine!"
The upholstery is also new, a few loose seat cushions. The old water tank has now been converted into a diesel tank. But most of the rest is original. No new brushstrokes inside. On the outside, the deck is freshly whitewashed, made non-slip with hand-picked Baltic Sea sand from Eckernförde, sprinkled onto the fresh paint with a tea strainer by Mrs Astrid. Old method. Simple method. Good method. Hurricane-tested. Nothing slips at all.
Two weeks later in Missunde on the Schlei, at the end of April. In the meantime, the sails have been hoisted, coffee and milk are already in the locker and everything is ready on deck. A short trial run, hoisting the sails once before heading out onto the Baltic Sea, the North Sea. It's a cold, crisp morning, later blue skies and sunshine.
"Wilfried is a strop and band fanatic"
Wilfried Erdmann cycled to the sailing boat and prepared everything. But he didn't have to do much. The great advantage of simplicity. Attach the jib, tie the sheets, ready and go.
Massive shackles are clinging to the lake fence, all sorts of straps and ribbons are knotted everywhere. "And there will be more and more of them along the way," sighs Astrid Erdmann. "Wilfried is a stropp and ribbon fanatic, they'll soon be hanging all over the ship and blowing in the wind." The old habit of a solo sailor. He doesn't want to search and grab for long when he has to lash something - and the next eight-metre wall comes marching up from behind.
The main is up quickly, the jib set. Cloths into which the roaring forties and screaming fifties have already blown. The strong tiller lies squarely in your hands. Engine off, the "Kathena nui" lays on her side the next moment, she wants to set off immediately, even in light winds.
Looking upwards, forwards. Three rows of reefs in the main, one row of reefs even in the jib. The reefing tapes are all tightly knotted and always ready. Outside running halyards, simple binder reef. No frills on the rig either. The main thing is that everything is easy to recognise with the naked eye and can be grabbed quickly in case of doubt. The religion of simplicity can be felt everywhere. What is not on board cannot break. But what is on board has to work under all conditions. The old steering compass from Cassens&Plath, the massive Aries, the aluminium bulkheads, the ten-millimetre shrouds - these are Erdmann's life insurance policies.
The "Kathena nui" sailing boat may not look very elegant, but it feels light, manoeuvrable, agile and yet brutally stable. Goes quickly through the tack. She promptly makes five knots, while the wind is only blowing at 2 or 3 Beaufort. The deck lies white and large in front of you. No thick superstructure to get in the way. No noise, no beeping and flashing instruments. The mechanical log is still on board. "I can hear how fast the boat is going," says Wilfried Erdmann. "I can hear it by the whirring."
The impossible became possible with the "Kathena nui"
The large fabric lies softly on the tree, smoothly folding into narrow folds. Handcrafted, toe rings around it. Finished. After four hours, the "Kathena nui" is back at the jetty. Her skipper is now sitting in the cockpit, wearing a grey woollen jumper and jeans. Sorting out lines and towing ropes. They could actually head north straight away. On the other hand, this journey with this ship is still hard to imagine.
Her owner had not visited many harbours with the sailing boat "Kathena nui". Their home, both their homes, is the sea. They will have to come to terms with it: People, stalls, jetty neighbours! Unfamiliar terrain. She looks pretty in a way, even though she's not a model. She floats silently on the jetty, high-sided, but still with a certain classic, rather simple elegance.
The true and special beauty of the "Kathena nui" is rooted in a category of its own. In a proportionality that goes far beyond sailing. It is about old laws. They say: You can achieve the great with the small and the impossible without great possibilities. In other words: David can beat Goliath - otherwise this small ship would not have been able to achieve such great things.
The sailing boat "Kathena nui" is proof that you can climb Everest in leather boots.
This article first appeared in YACHT 12/2016 and has been revised for this online version.
Technical data "Kathena nui"
- Designer: Uwe Dübbel
- Year of construction: 1984
- Lüa (hull length): 10.60 m
- Waterline length: 8.60 m
- Width: 3.25 m
- Draught: 1.70 m
- Weight: 5.4 tonnes
- Ballast: 2.5 tonnes
- Mainsail: 21.6 m²
- Genoa: 40 m²
- Engine: Yanmar, 14 hp
