#PARLEYLIVE: BORIS HERRMANN

Parley founder Cyrill Gutsch connects with sailor Boris Herrmann at sea to learn more about the final stages of the Vendée Globe race and how his team is contributing to ocean science

The sun is just beginning to set as we connect with German sailor, ocean advocate and Parley Collaborator Boris Herrmann by satellite from the mid-Atlantic. After 80 days at sea he’s now sailing north, calmly chatting, checking his instruments and monitoring his boat, the Seaexplorer - Yacht Club de Monaco, as it surges over the waves.

The last time Parley caught up with Boris, he had just sailed with Greta Thunberg across the Atlantic, helping her reach the United Nations Climate Summit in New York without flying. Now, he is in the final, tense stage of the Vendée Globe race, a gruelling round-the-world challenge that sees competitors departing from France to sail solo nearly 45,000km thorough the southern oceans and back. The race is known as the “Everest of the Seas” because so few competitors actually finish, and Boris is currently in good shape – swapping first and second places with rival skipper Charlie Dalin as they approach the finish line.

Despite the intensity of the race, Boris’ passion for ocean exploration and conservation means he’s constantly multitasking – conducting interviews, recording educational videos for youth and sharing some of the science on board. As he traversed the remote Southern Ocean and navigated south and north through the Atlantic, an onboard laboratory recorded ocean CO2, PH, salinity and water temperature. In partnership with the Max Planck Institute, Geomar and Ifremer, this hard-to-acquire data is already being shared with scientists from around the world.

Q&A — Parley founder Cyrill Gutsch in conversation with Boris Herrmann

You look so happy out there… how do you feel today?

I'm feeling actually quite good today. I had a little nap in the afternoon because the temperature in the last days was so high that it wasn't possible to get any naps in, during the day. Today I got a little one, so I feel fresher. And I just did a big sail change and now I'm just having a beautiful sunset, which I can see through the window here. So it's the bright side of the whole trip. The reality is that most days are grim and gray and tough and it is pretty much a grind to get yourself out of the boat up to the deck. You move only these three meters back and forth and that's your small living space. For already two months I'm on this – so I don't know how the human mind adapts to all of these things but somehow it seems it just does. Now it's just under two weeks left and I'm really, really keen to get home.

Have you noticed any big changes about yourself while at sea?

In a way it is a privilege because you are not so distracted, you are very focused on just your machine, just looking after this boat and making the boat go fast and making sure it doesn't get overloaded or overpowered or nothing breaks. So that's totally different from the setup on land where you are always chasing so many goals and sometimes even conflicting goals at the same time. And that makes it also even possible, I think, the nap and the short amount of sleep that your mind is not so jammed with all this noise that you have on land. It is you, the boat, the wind basically and the sea.

Describe your deepening relationship with the ocean, where did it all begin and what changes have you noticed?

I grew up sailing and have sailed all my life. I turned it into a profession and that gave me the opportunity to spend a lot of time on the ocean in the last 12 years, probably almost half a year, every year, or, let's say, a hundred days a year. So this is my fifth time around the world and so many miles on the ocean, so many days spent at sea. I’ve observed changes and it started a couple of years back, that we started conversations with scientists. The first thing was that we had a very strange Arctic summer during an around the world race ten years ago and it took us ten days longer because the ice situation was so different. After that scientists said it’s likely to be correlated with climate change, different ice drifts, different wind patterns in the South. So a curiosity started there – and since then we very often encounter these sargasso seaweed patterns or areas in the ocean that are usually not associated with sargasso seaweed. That is also most likely the scientists say, "a hint of climate change."

What data you are collecting throughout the race?

So oceans take up a lot of CO2 and that's a natural thing, that is good. There has to be CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean and the Earth system, but with our manmade climate change we can see now how much this increases. Past data of vessels in this same region here, 40-50 years ago they measured 320 parts per million CO2 and now it's 400, 418, 420. I can see the digits from here on the instrument. So the same increase that we see in the atmosphere, we also see in the ocean. But to observe it in the ocean it's much more difficult because you need a quite elaborate machine that consumes quite a lot of electrical power. So to really get precise data is almost only possible from vessels, from boats or ships, and around Antarctica where we sail, the Vendée Globe race, there's no commercial shipping. So this trip was a unique opportunity to get a whole data set around the world, but especially around these remote regions where no one else goes.

What different effects have you seen from climate change on the oceans?

I believe that climate change is the biggest threat for the ocean. Of course, plastic is also a huge topic, a huge threat, a huge problem, but the effect of climate change is so profound, and so the magnitude almost no one realizes. The amount of heat energy that the ocean takes up every year is crazy. This is absorbed and the ocean has such a huge ... I mean, 72% of the planet is covered by the sea and the amount of energy is unimaginable. So even if we stopped emitting CO2 now into the atmosphere, the temperatures would still keep rising for the next ten years or maybe even longer, because the ocean is such a huge and slow organism.

Why should everyone, even non-ocean people, care?

Little by little we are realizing the ocean's importance for all the climate change situations. I mean, everyone thinks about the atmosphere, but really oceans are the cornerstone of this whole warming. They absorb most of the heat energy, 93%, and a lot of the man made CO2 mitigates climate change but, at the same time, it acidifies the oceans, and also the increased heat changes. Biological systems like coral reefs die. Again, that's much more important than most people in the general public appreciate. So that's why we made it a bit our mission for this adventure also to sensitize people, to carry the message and also to help science by measuring the level of acidification and CO2 uptake by the ocean.

What role can youth play in the oceans movement?

Many people say, "Well, the kids are the next generation, they will care about all this." I don't think like that. I think we have to care now and we are under huge time pressure, we are in a race against time, we are in this famous race that we must win. But the kids go to their parents I find very often. And big company leaders, they sometimes do public statements where they say, "Well, my daughter asked me about what we do as a company" and so on. So I think youth have a tremendous impact on society – and it's a tremendous voice if they speak to their parents because I think, your own kids, if they ask you that is probably something you are more accountable to than a whole social movement or the media or stakeholders. Or if you are a company director or if you are in a position where you can actually make change and your own kids question your moral integrity and what are you actually doing good for this planet?

Collaboration seems to be crucial to your race, can you speak about how important it is to have a team backing you?

Yes, absolutely, Cyrill. I always said 80% of the outcome of this race is determined before the start. So we did four years of very meticulous preparation of 11 Trans-Atlantic trips and one was a greater trip. So that was also part of the motivation for the greater voyage was gaining extra experience with this boat back and forth, of course, across the Atlantic. And all of this pays off now that we, collectively, as a team, understood each screw, each little nut and bolt on this boat and changed the ones that were too weak and made it all work. Now the boat is still in good shape and I'm still safe and I can still go at full potential. That's the fruit of four years of work of the whole team. Everyone was motivated at work during this time because we knew we are preparing a spaceship that has to be perfect and that is orbiting the globe and there's no room for error, and that is a very, very special and privileged work environment to have this combination of fascinating talent, but also the pressure of perfection and absolute excellence.

Team Malizia | Follow the final stage of the Vendée Globe Race | Parley profile of Boris Herrmann

---

BORIS HERRMANN

Boris is a world-class sailor who competes in some of the world’s most challenging races. As the skipper for Team Malizia, Boris sails with his teammate Pierre Casiraghi. Together, they promote ocean science, protection, and education all over the world. Boris’ passion for sailing and the seas led him to start My Ocean Challenge with Pierre and their team. With this program, Boris has traveled for 12 years, sharing his adventures and teaching children about the ocean’s natural beauty. Most recently, Boris and Pierre sailed climate activist Greta Thunberg across the Atlantic on their 60ft foiling race yacht.

---

MORE TALKS