Boris
HERRMANN

Boris Herrmann started his professional offshore sailing career in 2001 as the youngest participant in the Mini Transat race. Since then, he has circumnavigated the world 6 times. The Southern Ocean holds few secrets for him, after a Barcelona World Race, an attempt in the Jules Verne Trophy, and a Class40 race around the world.

In 2020, he became the first German to ever compete in the Vendée Globe, finishing in 5th place. After launching the new Malizia – Seaexplorer in 2022, he finished 3rd with his Team Malizia in The Ocean Race, winning two legs, and breaking the 24-hour distance record. He took part in his second Vendée Globe in 2024-2025, finishing in 12th position. In 2025, Boris Herrmann and his team competed in The Ocean Race Europe 2025, finishing 4th overall. 

After the race, the team sold its IMOCA yacht to Francesca Clapcich and built its next-generation IMOCA. Designed by Antoine Koch and built by CDK Technologies, the new IMOCA yacht Malizia 4 was launched on 6 July 2026 in Lorient. Boris Herrmann will compete onboard the new yacht in crewed races such as The Ocean Race Atlantic 2026 and The Ocean Race 2026–27, the solo Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe 2026, and ultimately in his third Vendée Globe solo race in 2028.

Team Malizia’s A Race We Must Win mission

Boris Herrmann and his Team Malizia run the A Race We Must Win – Climate Action Now! campaign since 2018, combining sailing, science, education, and partnerships. Since then, the German skipper has been carrying a laboratory onboard his boat that measures valuable Ocean CO2, temperature, and salinity data in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, GEOMAR, Alfred-Wegener Institute, and Ifremer. This data is used by scientists worldwide to better understand the role of the Ocean in climate change and incredibly valuable as the team’s IMOCA race yacht sails in the most remote areas of the world where almost no research vessels go. During the Vendée Globe 2020-2021, Boris Herrmann collected the first round-the-world lap of Ocean CO2 data ever recorded. Since then, they collected two additional laps onboard Malizia - Seaexplorer in The Ocean Race 2022-23 and the Vendée Globe 2024-2025. With these measurements, Boris Herrmann’s team has contributed to key scientific publications such as the IPCC report and Malizia - Seaexplorer has even been cited as a top contributor on the Ocean data side in the Global Carbon Budget 2024.

Through the award-winning My Ocean Challenge programme, his Team Malizia also educates schoolchildren around the world about the Ocean and climate change. Created in 2018, the award-winning programme has since been translated into 11 languages and reached over 118,000 children worldwide. In 2025, the team launched Malizia Explorer, a second sailing vessel dedicated to science and outreach, which has already conducted Antarctic expeditions to the Danger Islands and the Western Antarctic Peninsula.

Team Malizia’s A Race We Must Win – Climate Action Now! mission is only possible due to the strong and long-lasting commitment from its six main partners: the Yacht Club de Monaco, EFG International, Zurich Group Germany, KPMG Germany, Hapag-Lloyd, and Schütz. These partners, ranging from the logistics industry, to insurance, to banking band behind Team Malizia to support its campaign, each of them working towards sustainability projects in their own field to innovate around climate solutions.