"Gorch Fock" returns to its home port

The sailing training ship of the German Navy, the "Gorch Fock", is expected to return to its home port of Kiel on Friday after a training trip on the Baltic Sea. This ends after a good five weeks and around 2500 nautical miles the 174th foreign training trip and the first sea voyage of the new commander, Captain Andreas-Peter Graf von Kielmansegg, the Navy announced on Tuesday.

In addition to the regular crew, there are more than 100 cadets on board the 89-metre-long barque. The future officers should learn the seaman's skills before they start the academic part of the training at the universities of the German Armed Forces in Hamburg and Munich.

During the voyage, the "Gorch Fock" visited the three ports of Rostock, Stettin and Helsinki. "I was impressed by the great interest of the public," said Kielmansegg, according to the Navy statement. Around 15,000 visitors came on board at the “Open Ship” days in the three ports. The "Gorch Fock", named after the synonym of the Finkenwerder writer Johann Wilhelm Kinau, is the most famous ship in the German Navy and probably the most visited ship.

After years of renovation, the Müritz Naval School, which reports directly to the "Gorch Fock", only got the ship back at the end of September last year. The cost of the restoration rose from the initially planned ten to 135 million euros.

The new commander Kielmansegg took over the management of the training ship in March. Kielmansegg knows the ship well. From 1996 to 2004 he was part of the permanent crew of the "Gorch Fock", most recently as first officer.

According to the Navy, around 15,000 officer and non-commissioned officer candidates have been trained on the “Gorch Fock” since it was commissioned in December 1958. In the course of the training trips, she has visited around 390 ports in almost 60 countries on five continents, covering more than 750,000 nautical miles.