Pros like Boris Herrmann leave nothing to chance before extreme regattas. This is how you prepare yourself mentally and materially in the best possible way for your next challenge.
When extreme conditions await on the water, professional sailors leave nothing to chance. A current example of this is the German offshore sailor Boris Herrmann. According to a report by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), he and his team are preparing for the Ocean Race Atlantic. This race covers about 3200 nautical miles (quantified as around 1728 kilometres in the FAZ report) from New York to Lorient in France. Complicated wind conditions and tough tests are on the agenda. How do pros manage to prepare themselves materially and mentally for such challenges?
Material preparation in professional sport is extremely intensive. Herrmann is starting with a new yacht, the "Malizia 4". According to the FAZ, around 85,000 working hours and two years of development time by more than 150 employees went into this boat. But pure technology is not enough: after launching the boat, the team completed around 6500 training nautical miles in just two months.
The new boat is narrower, has a flatter hull and a significantly smaller cockpit. Herrmann describes the boat as more uncompromising and more difficult to sail than the predecessor model. The key to success lies in really getting to know the new sports equipment through intensive training on the water in order to get the optimum out of it and to be able to safely master the higher speed.
In addition to the material, the crew plays a decisive role in mental security. In the Ocean Race Atlantic, a strict rule applies: the four-person crew must consist of equal parts men and women. Herrmann sails together with Cole Brauer, Justine Mettraux and Julien Villion.
Mental preparation here is based primarily on time spent together. According to the FAZ, Herrmann emphasises that he feels very safe with this crew because they spent an extremely large amount of time together on the water during the test runs. This shared experience creates the necessary trust to be able to rely on each other even in difficult wind conditions.
Even if you do not cross the Atlantic in recreational sports with a multi-million yacht, the principles of the pros can easily be transferred to your own plans:
Your takeaway: Trust in your own material and the crew is built primarily through hours spent together and intensive training on the water.
This article was generated automatically with AI from the sources listed above and has not been editorially reviewed.