About Klaus Hympendahl

I was born in Hamburg and live now in Duesseldorf, Germany. Two years of my life I spent in the US. For 25 years I worked as a copywriter and Creative Director in major advertising agencies. My last business years I was running my own advertising agency.

1986 to 1991 I circumnavigated on my 12 Meter steel yacht AFRICAN QUEEN. In these years I wrote approx. 40 articles for the German sailing magazine SEGELN.

Back in Germany I wrote the book SEGELN ÜBER DEM VULKAN (Sailing Over The Volcano) where I described 90 different characters I met on our route. The book is no longer available.

In 1991 I started my mail order company Blue Water GmbH, it was sold in 1997.

In the same year I wrote four articles for the German sailing magazine PALSTEK: How did the Polynesians, the Vikings, the Arabs and how did Columbus navigate?

Still in 1997 I started on the Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific a project to rebuild the last Polynesian sailing boat ‘te puke’. This project was supported by UNESCO. During this period I began writing my first non-fiction book EL NINO - WENN DAS MEER BRENNT (El Nino – Burning Sea).

In 2000 I published LOGBUCH DER ANGST (Log Book of Fear) which, two years later, was chosen best German maritime book.

In addition I wrote several articles for YACHT magazine. In 2002 I finished my fourth book YACHT PIRATERIE – DIE NEUE GEFAHR (Yacht Piracy – The New Peril) has been released for which Jimmy Cornell wrote the foreword. This book will be on the market in English in autumn 2003, published by Seridan House, New York.

In 2004 I published the book CHECKLIST FOR CRUISERS (CHECKLISTE FÜR FAHRTENSEGLER). It names about 3500 items which a cruiser might need aboard.

In 2005 my latest book "Sünde auf See" (Sin at Sea) has been published.

Since 2007 I am prepairing the expedition Lapita-Voyage. We will be the first sailing with two historical replicas of Polynesian catamarans the migration route of ancient Polynesians. We shall start in November 2008 in the Philippines and end after about 4,000 nautical miles at the remote islands of Tikopia and Anuta in the east of the Solomon Islands. Here the two boats will be donated to the islanders.

Cheers and fair winds,

Klaus Hympendahl