Sailing the Mediterranean on a 136-Passenger Windjammer

From the bridge of the three-masted windjammer, the Sea Cloud Spirit, the captain known as out the phrases we’d all been looking forward to.

“Let’s set the sails!” he cried, next turning off the engines, life maneuvering to guard an optimal attitude for his 18 deckhands to climb into the shrouds and unfurl the send’s 44,132 sq. ft of sails through hand.

Like acrobats, the workforce scurried up the masts to the higher topgallant sails that rose just about 200 ft above us. The send’s captain, Vukota Stojanovic, upcoming insisted that none of it was once for display. “Whenever there is an opportunity to sail, we sail,” he stated.

For the nearest week, the workforce hauled the ropes till the 28 sails have been billowing within the air, propelling the 452-foot-long send — the arena’s greatest passenger crusing vessel on which the sails are raised through hand — towards its first port of name, Portofino, Italy.

At a age when cruise strains are packing their ever-more-gargantuan ships with H2O soils and basketball courts, the 136-passenger Sea Cloud Spirit, with its out of date clipper design and picket decks, stands proud. It’s the latest send from the Hamburg-based Sea Cloud Cruises, and life it’s the corporate’s greatest, Sea Cloud stated it sought after to loose range for passengers to fix to the circumstance parts.

“Wherever you are on the ship, it feels like you are sitting on the water,” stated Amelia Dominick, 71, a retired actual property agent from Cologne, Germany, who was once on her 3rd cruise boarded the Sea Cloud Spirit.

I had arrived for a four-night “taster sailing” from Great, France, to the Ligurian pocket of Italy, designed to lure passengers to enroll in an extended cruise. Right here’s what I discovered.

The send and cabins

The Spirit has many sympathies and luxuries, together with a health heart, library, hair salon and a spa with a Finnish sauna that overlooks the ocean. The deck layouts are spacious, with nooks carved out for privateness and refreshment.

Sixty-nine spacious cabins have home windows that perceptible onto the ocean. My room, a teenage suite at the 3rd deck, had two massive arched home windows, mahogany tables, a balcony and a at ease sofa and armchair. The marble rest room was once grand, with a gold-plated sink and massive jetted tub.

The magnificent inner design is encouraged through the actual Sea Cloud, in-built 1931 for Marjorie Merriweather Put up, the American heiress of the Common Meals Company, with shiny picket panels and gold trimmings. The Sea Cloud was once the biggest personal crusing yacht on the earth prior to Put up passed it over to the U.S. Army for usefulness as a weather-reporting vessel all the way through Global Struggle II. The four-mast, 64-passenger send has since been restored to its former glory and can sail around the Aegean and Adriatic this summer season.

Crusing

The revel in felt original — even prior to the sails have been all set — with an in depth protection drill. On maximum cruises, the drill includes a security video and signing in at an meeting level. However right here, passengers placed on their moment jackets and walked via disaster situations that integrated rationing meals provides and fishing from the lifeboat.

Every past, the sails have been all set, even all the way through weighty downpour and air speeds over 30 knots. Visitors in need of to take part within the rigging are in most cases invited to take action, however the climate situations made it too dangerous for this crusing.

“It was amazing to watch the work go into putting the sails up and down and to experience the wind power pulling the ship so fast without the engines,” stated Malte Rahnenfuehrer, a 50-year-old psychologist from Zurich, who was once touring together with his spouse and two youngsters.

The captain

It’s uncommon for cruise passengers to peer the send’s captain next the preliminary welcome beverages or gala dinner. However Capt. Vukota Stojanovic was once omnipresent all through the cruise, from atmosphere sails to lifeguarding to mingling with visitors.

At the beginning from Montenegro, Captain Stojanovic piloted container ships for years. When he was once requested to believe helming the actual Sea Cloud just about 10 years in the past, he hesitated as a result of he had deny revel in crusing. Even next he discovered the ropes — and there are 340 ropes (referred to as working rigging) at the vessel — he was once not sure. “I grew to love the sailings, the boats, the crew the lifestyle, but I still felt I belonged on container ships,” he stated. “It would be a big adjustment, especially because I would have to shave every day,” he joked.

Sooner or later, he permitted the chance and labored tirelessly to discover ways to sail and function the send. Nowadays, he helps to keep an “open bridge” coverage, permitting passengers to consult with the keep watch over room, even if he’s wrestling with the air.

“The crew and the passengers are all part of the experience, and I like to meet people and receive their feedback,” Captain Stojanovic stated.

Condition

Sea Cloud Cruises aspires to tug a “gentle” method, the use of air energy to force its ships anywhere imaginable, even supposing that suggests converting path for optimum climate situations. When crusing isn’t imaginable, the Spirit has two diesel-electric engines that run on low-sulfur marine diesel gas. The corporate could also be operating with ports that experience shore energy features to plug into the native electrical energy.

Boarded, there’s an emphasis on reusable bottles and paper straws, and workforce contributors isolated forged misuse to be compacted and got rid of when in port.

Tours and Actions

We made stops in Portofino, San Remo, Italy, and St.-Tropez, France, anchoring offshore and attending to land through gentle — a distinction to the bulky cruise ships with their noisy horns and thick plumes of exhaust spewing from their funnels.

For passengers in need of to tug a dip (there’s no pond), the workforce marked an segment within the H2O with floats and an inflatable slide. The H2O was once chilly, however many passengers took the plunge from the swimming deck. Visitors may additionally tug “Zodiac Safaris” across the send to get perspectives of the vessel from the H2O.

Tours ranged from meals and wine excursions to e-biking and seashore journeys. In Portofino, passengers have been isolated to discover the attractions independently, together with the Castello Brown Citadel and the lighthouse on Punta del Capo rock. There was once sufficient age to devour foods on shore because the send didn’t leaving till 11 p.m. Over the summer season, the Sea Cloud Spirit will sail to Spain, Portugal, France and the Azores, amongst alternative locations. On Nov. 11, she’s going to leaving for St. Maarten within the Caribbean for the iciness.

Anywhere the vessel is going, stated Mirell Reyes, president of Sea Cloud Cruise for North The united states, the corporate tries to “stay away from the crowds and ports where big cruise ships spit out 6,000 passengers.”

Summer time costs, which come with meals and drinks, area from $3,995 for a four-night crusing in a admirable cabin to $9,420 for a veranda suite. Seven-night sailings value between $6,995 and $16,495.

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