“I’m so happy not to be alone,” an emotional Boris Herrmann said standing at the base of his 29m/95ft mast, a foot-long gash ripped into the carbon above his head threatening his entire race, “this would be a horror show alone.”
Just a week into the furthest non-stop Southern Ocean leg the race had ever attempted, from Cape Town to Itajai, the damage to Maliza’s mast looked insurmountable to outside observers. To continue on for a month of sailing ever deeper into the planet’s remotest reaches would be madness, surely they must turn back? They did not. Instead, Herrmann’s team sailed on to win.
This leg confounded expectations in many ways. Back in Gothenburg in 2018 I chatted to Volvo Ocean Race sailors who’d completed thousands of miles in the much-maligned but indisputably robust VO65s. The idea of the next race taking place in IMOCA 60s was being mooted, but many crews felt the flighty, foil-assisted designs simply wouldn’t stand up to being thrashed around the world by a team of four.
When the IMOCA class was confirmed for the current edition of The Ocean Race, those concerns had to be addressed – for some entries that involved building boats specifically designed for a larger crew. Then when Covid meant organisers could no longer plan stopovers in China, Australia, or New Zealand, a solution presented itself: one 13,000-mile mega-leg roaring through the south from the Cape of Good Hope to beyond Cape Horn. The longest stage the race had ever seen, and a symbolic return to the event’s roots. The doubters, however, remained vociferous.
