Sailing Challenge: We are one MaibornWolff

“This is not only about sailing”, says our CTO Alex Hofmann, at the same time the initiator and main skipper of the sailing challenge. “The idea of the Challenge is to connect our people, unite all our locations and do this unique experience together.

Read our diary:

From Valencia to Mallorca

The port of Mallorca has been reached, the first beers tipped to the safe arrival and our colleagues are full of amazing impressions.

The highlight for Senior Data Scientist Valentin Koch: “Definitely swimming in the middle of the windless and silky smooth sea with no land in sight. But sailing at night under a clear starry sky wasn’t wrong either.”

Some members of the three crews initially struggled with seasickness. When the Mallorca cliffs were in sight, the nausea got better.

Great atmosphere also on the boat from our CTO Alexander Hofmann, as the crew had caught some fat fish.

The abolute wow moment for our camerawoman Oleksandra Tishchenko:  the dolphins that swam in the wake of the sailing boat for a while.

From Mallorca to Sardinia

3 days at sea that gave our three crews adventurous experiences.

The journey began with calm sea, sunshine. Lots of time for fishing, swimming, singing, painting and laughing. But the weather got worse, the wind whipped up to 20 knots and the waves were 3 meters high. Many of our colleagues were struggling with nausea and were lying flat.

3 days at sea also means that you have to reckon with material wear and tear, as skipper Konrad Schreiber, Deputy Head of Data and AI at MaibornWolff GmbH, knows. The rope holding the headsail snapped on his boat.

Skipper Viktoria Schreiner, who manages our largest IoT project, later had to climb the 20-meter-high mast in the harbor to loosen the rope.

The main sail tore on the second day, so the crew’s boat around CTO Alexander Hofmann had to continue with the engine. The next day, it was now 9 p.m. and dark, when the warning came that the boat was only going on reserve.

How many liters of diesel did you have left? Skipper Michaela Kern, Product Experience Designer: “Even the manual didn’t say how big the reserve tank was. The radio was also broken. Only when we had mobile phone reception again 2 hours off the coast of Sardinia were we able to reach the marina.”

But neither the marina nor the coastguard could bring diesel to the boat. So the crew had to wait for Konrad’s boat. His boat pulled the boat into the harbor in a towed formation. That was an unexpected kind of team building.

Saturday, the 3 crews spent the day in port buying food supplies and doing a lot of repair work. A sailmaker came with the sewing machine to sew the mainsail.

And Michi Kern goes in search of a new green position light: Since that also broke on the crossing, she cut open a green plastic bottle, put a headlamp in it and attached the whole thing to the boat with duct tape. “It’s good that I sometimes have to tinker with my job, for example when I’m building prototypes,” laughs Michi.

Sunday at 8 a.m. the three sailing boats set off towards Tunis. We wish you better weather and a safe journey with no other things get broken….

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