Deutscher Hochseesportverband HANSA
Modern TYPO3-Relaunch for Europe's leading yacht school

The Deutscher Hochseesportverband HANSA e.V. (DHH) is a non-profit association based in Hamburg dedicated to training its members to become safe and confident sailors. Around 25 full-time staff members and several hundred seasonal sailing instructors support this mission.

DHH offers water sports enthusiasts from around the world a wide range of courses and experiences:

• Sailing and motorboat licenses
• Online distance learning
• Sailing holidays and class trips
• Yacht and skipper training
• Shared sailing tours in international waters

With more than 16,000 members, the DHH operates sailing schools in Glücksburg on the Baltic Sea and Prien on Lake Chiemsee, along with 10 regional branches across Germany.

With over 200 courses and extensive sailing-related content, the project required a complete restructuring of the DHH website content to ensure intuitive access for members, prospects, and new customers.

Our scope included:

• Designing a modern visual identity aligned with the DHH brand
• Creating a user-centric navigation system
• Ensuring full responsiveness across all devices
• Developing an editor-friendly content system with TYPO3

Since the editorial team was already experienced with TYPO3 and the CMS suited all project requirements, it was the natural choice for the relaunch.

The main technical challenge was building a fast, real-time search and filtering logic for the course offerings. Our goal was to deliver filtered course results instantly and without any loading delays—across all screen sizes and device types.

Timing was another critical factor: the sailing season and course start dates left little room for delay. Any setback could have disrupted a complex chain of planning, including instructor assignments and course scheduling.

Much like constructing a house, we began with the framework and roof: our first deliverable was a clickable and testable prototype with basic styling. This allowed the editorial team to start entering courses and testing the React-based course finder early on, while our design and frontend team continued refining the interface.

The new DHH website successfully met all goals:

• A modern, visually inspiring design with large images that spark a desire to sail
• Intuitive usability across all devices
• A powerful, real-time course finder that allows users to filter based on their preferences
• A significantly faster editorial workflow thanks to frontend editing capabilities in TYPO3