Despite coming from America's Sailing Capital, Annapolis, Ryan Breymaier got into sailing late, while he was at St. Mary's College of Maryland. As the tall blond curly haired American recalls: “I saw a sign on a soda machine, saying ‘come down and learn how to sail’, so I took them up on their offer and I have basically never done anything else since. I got very lucky at school to do something I was good at straight away and since then I have made a living sailing boats all around the world.”
While the majority of top racing sailors grow up learning to sail in dinghies, Breymaier instead was taught on The Card, a 80-ft long ketch, that competed in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race. “It was a pretty good start, jumping in at the deep end,” he says.
After college, Breymaier spent 10 years racing yachts in Annapolis, a hotbed of top sailing programs, including George Collins’ 1997-8 Whitbread campaign Chessie Racing. “I made a lot of contacts and ended up in Europe where I met a guy who was boat captain for Educación Sin Fronteras in the first Barcelona World Race and I helped with that project,” he says of his initial exposure to IMOCA 60s.
Breymaier cut his teeth in the class when he moved to France to join the team of former IMOCA World Champion Roland Jourdain, racing on board the veteran skipper’s Veolia Environnement in the Istanbul Europa Race in 2009. This subsequently led to him teaming up with German round the world sailor Boris Herrmann for the second Barcelona World Race, racing Jourdain’s IMOCA 60, rebranded in the colours of their sponsor Neutrogena. Breymaier and Herrmann’s non-stop round the world race was sailed with maturity and despite set-backs, including a leak in the hydraulic ram used to cant their yacht’s keel, they arrived back in Barcelona a creditable fifth.
“That was a huge success for me and was my start in the class and since then I’ve had the opportunity to sail on a few different boats.” This has included Hugo Boss, while Breymaier has also been part of Italian former IMOCA 60 skipper Giovanni Soldini’s record breaking campaign aboard Maserati.
Breymaier’s recent return to the IMOCA class came as another lucky break when he was selected to replace Alex Thomson, who has been forced to stand down from skippering Hugo Boss in the IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race due to it coinciding with the birth of his second child. Breymaier was the obvious choice as 5 West, the management company associated with Thomson, has been helping in his quest to find a sponsor for his own Vendee Globe campaign, Project USA.
This opportunity will provide a huge boost for Breymaier’s campaign as he not only gets to compete in a race setting off from his home country, but aboard one of the top branded boats. “It provides a great example of a successful project, with successful sponsors, and being associated with that dream come true in terms of communicating my project.”
Ideally he hopes to secure a sponsor for Project USA with business both in France and the States, which would fund the construction of a new IMOCA 60, for him to race in the next Vendée Globe.
As to why the USA to date doesn’t have a bigger presence in the Ocean Masters circuit, Breymaier ponders: “It has been traditionally a very French class and not too many people in the US have maybe even known it existed. The culture in US is also different. The sports which are popular there are for the most part team sports, like football, baseball, basketball, etc.”
Over recent years, Breymaier has had the chance to sail many top offshore race boats, but remains most impressed with the IMOCA 60. “It is by far the best boat in the world - for its size there is nothing faster, it’s very sweet to sail, and it is a custom boat which you have the opportunity to build a project around. It’s not just about going sailing - you also have a whole campaign: to get the boat prepared, make it reliable, etc. The race is the last 10% of it really and that’s interesting for me.”
For Breymaier the Ocean Masters circuit also provides the most opportunities for elite level singlehanded offshore racing: “Ever since I was at St Mary’s College, I’ve always enjoyed racing shorthanded or singlehanded. There is something about going from point A to point B that gives a sense of purpose and it’s a much bigger challenge. I like to push myself and sailing offshore is a pretty good way to do that.”
Here's a profile of Ryan we ran in SpinSheet
