EXPEDITION ERDE: Bis ans Ende der Welt

Having just become a couple, Claudia and Jürgen Kirchberger set off on their wild travels. Traveling in a camper van along the American coast, they discover their love for the sea and change course: After a week-long sailing course in the Los Angeles harbor and a whirlwind wedding in Las Vegas, they set out onto the ocean to explore the world by sail. A turbulent start gives way to a life under sail. And the two go all out: they’re not drawn to the usual vacation spots or the world’s easy sailing routes. They fall in love with the cold regions of the Earth and spend two years aboard in the Arctic. Together, they experience an icy winter stranded in Greenland, followed by the “Mount Everest of sailors”: the Northwest Passage. They encounter polar bears and walruses and sail among humpback whales in Alaska.

Claudia and Jürgen continue sailing into the tropics across the Pacific and through the South Seas, where they experience hospitality amid palm trees and their thirst for adventure leads them on dives beneath their floating home.

After a year in New Zealand, they once again depart from the classic round-the-world sailing route and tackle the toughest ocean passage that any single body of water in the world has to offer: through the realm of storms, the Roaring Forties, on their way to South America.

Upon arriving in Chile, they experience a magical winter in the channels of Patagonia and embark on a special adventure the following summer: as the second Austrian yacht to do so, they leave Cape Horn in their wake and sail through the treacherous Drake Passage to spend three months exploring Antarctica.

They sail back to Europe across the Atlantic, and the circle is complete. Claudia and Jürgen are the first Austrians to have circumnavigated the American continents.

With honesty and passion, Claudia and Jürgen share how two landlubbers became daring ocean sailors. They explain how they refused to let anything stop them—not seasickness, mental and physical strain pushing them to their limits, storms, or fear. They describe how the desire for a self-determined life, combined with curiosity about the beauty of our planet, keeps driving them ever forward.