The sea gives, the sea takes away. The insight is not new for Boris Herrmann, who grew up on ship planks as a child. But as brutally as in this Vendée Globe, the sea has rarely favored the lucky ones and abandoned the others.
It was a close race around the world until we reached the coast of Brazil. Here, in the South Atlantic, the St. Helena High often causes light winds and sluggish sailing. But a small low pressure area opened a narrow corridor with favorable gusts, and so the leading group roared along a narrow wind highway from the coast of Brazil towards the Cape of Good Hope. This door closed again behind the leaders – and so the gap increased every day until it totaled more than 1,300 nautical miles. That is the distance between Boris Herrmann and the leaders. After a third of the race, the situation doesn’t seem promising. “It’s tough,” he said in a video link on Tuesday, saying it was a “preliminary decision” in the race. And the next blow in the neck is imminent.
Herrman believes that the hope of remaining in the same weather system as the top of the fleet will not be fulfilled. “The low is moving away, we are losing the wind.” He is now concentrating on his sailing competitors around him, for him it is now a race within a race.
:To the gates of hell
Icebergs, loneliness and roaring winds: the Vendée Globe is one of the last great adventures of our time. One of the crazy people: sailor Boris Herrmann. This time he is one of the favorites to sail around the world.
Whereby: The leaders have to hold on right now. Charlie Dalin and Sébastien Simon are heading into what the weather experts at the Vendée Globe call a “no-go zone”. While some pursuers have moved north to avoid the depression, the two Frenchmen are heading towards the center of the storm, where 60 knots of wind and waves of up to ten meters high were forecast. She sailing close to the forbidden zone in the south, which the race management has set up to keep the sailors away from the ice of the southern sea.
So the leaders drive their ships into the roaring winds in the hope that the shortest route will also be the fastest and that they will get through the whipped sea unscathed. “Dalin and Simon could be eaten up by the low pressure area. The night from Friday to Saturday could be scary,” predicts professional sailor Tim Kröger on the NDR station. These are not conditions for regatta sailing – it’s about survival.
Meanwhile, Boris Herrmann is shaken in the foothills of a large low pressure area. He sleeps for 20 to 30 minutes, wakes up, checks the course, the equipment, the wind in the sails. A few hours of slumber a day, and the strain doesn’t leave him unscathed. “I look tired,” he states in the video link. Everyday life takes energy in such conditions. It takes discipline to eat three meals a day in the constant ups and downs, says Herrmann. In addition, there was something unforeseen: There were problems with the wings, which allow his boat to fly over the water when conditions are favorable. He had to do repair work, which also drained his energy. On Wednesday night, Herrmann reported a “big mental low point”.
A huge albatross accompanied him, a companion in lonely hours
But the Hamburg ocean-going sailor resists the impression that he is now letting go of all destinations. “Just making the Vendée Globe is a huge deal,” he says: “I’m competing with the best sailors in the world. And I’m still hoping for my chance.” Nobody knows better how quickly hopes can be dashed or new confidence appear on the horizon. At the Vendée Globe four years ago, Herrmann was heading for the podium when, exhausted, he fell asleep and rammed a Spanish fishing trawler shortly before the finish.
:“Is that a smuggler?”
Because the German circumnavigator Boris Herrmann crashed into a Spanish fishing trawler shortly before the finish, he only came fifth in the “Vendée Globe” regatta. A conversation with the fisherman.
The 43-year-old draws strength from nature in the harsh, unforgiving conditions in the Southern Ocean. A huge albatross accompanied him for a while, a companion in the hours in which the competitor Boris Herrmann became a sailor.
One who tries to forget the hunt and allows himself the leisure to admire the sunset; to be in the moment instead of in the forecasts of the weather systems. “I have to learn to enjoy it,” he says. It is a huge challenge. But he now wants to face the Arctic Ocean with a “light heart” and wait for what the sea gives or takes away: “It is what it is.”
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