Ocean Wanderer

Best bit?
En route to Rouen from Horta Azores especially I enjoyed the two days in a force 6 abt. 200miles north of the Azores as it really made one realise that sailing a 500ton sq.rigger requires extraordinary skills in sail handling and as a novice i really felt i could take part working along with the prof. crew. of Europa. Wonderful experience!

What was the worst bit?
Being becalmed in the channel for a day or two!

Why do you sail? 
Really because i’ve always had that urge & wanted to sail on a tall ship having seen film footage& read several books/accounts of the clippers .

Any other comments
Just like to say a big thank you to Classic Sailing for making it all so worthwhile.
Ocean voyage crew from Azores to France in May 2019. 

Antarctica

Facebook Review 5 stars

I wish I could give more stars! The adventure of a lifetime, my voyage to Antarctica on the Bark Europa was more than I could ever wish for. The experiences of this adventure will stay with me for ever…
The crew are absolutely amazing: hard working, always a smile, and the galley crew are legendary! The guides are very knowledgeable and give lectures, tours and explanations with great enthousiasm as well as humor. I could not imagine this voyage without any of them. My fellow voyage crew members are now friends for life!
If you ever get the opportunity to go on this adventure, do not hesitate for a single second. Just go!
Thank you permanent crew, voyage crew and office staff!!
Elisabeth K, Jan 2016

Enjoyed the Most

All of it. The combination of sailing and shore landings at the various locations, as well as the wildlife and scenery.

Enjoyed the least.

Having people join the ship who had absolutely no intention of joining the Watch System was hugely divisive and caused a lot of angst amongst the Voyage Crew. If someone can go in the Zodiacs and spend all day walking around the shore locations they are capable of doing Look Out. Excuses such as I don’t feel like doing Sea Watches, or I am not a Night Person should not be accepted. Everyone should sign to say they are prepared to join the system. Due to sea sickness my particular Watch was, at one point, down to 5 people. Having individuals drinking red wine/Bacardi and coke and then announcing they are off to bed, leaving the remainder to carry on was very selfish and self-centred.

Phil J Antarctica Feb 2019.

Classic Sailing and Europa believe in ‘hands on sailing’ and we are aware of the problem Phil J mentions above.

We are working to ensure that future participants in all Europa’s voyages are fully signed up to full participation in the sailing including watch keeping at night, sail handling and look out duty, etc. In all instance allowances are made for the weather conditions and that people maybe unwell.

Classic Sailing has and will always believe in ‘hands on sailing’. For us, and what we offer, it is the best way to get the most out of the sailing experiences on all our voyages.

Customer Comments – Cape to Cape 2018

What did you enjoy most?

On the southern Ocean with the bark rolling out to 40 degrees, water flooding the main deck as we hauled on the clews and buntlines to take in sail

Cape to Cape sailor 2018

What was the best bit?

All of it!! Maybe seeing over 100 Fin whales feeding on route to Elephant Island – that was pretty cool.

What was the worst bit?

Being stung by a Portuguese Man of War whilst swimming off Tristan da Cuhna….but that in itself was amazing so not really the worst bit!

Why do you sail? It really helps us to know your specific reasons.

Freedom and curiosity

Any other comments

It truly was a life changing experience and one I will treasure for the rest of my life!” – Lucy M – Cape to Cape 2018

Trying to sum up what this journey has meant to me

LOGBOOK 10-01-2012 10:00

We have passed Cape Horn. In a short time the Bark Europa, which has been our home for the last couple of months, will re-join the wider world.

Having spent 47 days in this little island of metal and wood in a very large ocean, and this having been my first time on a sailing ship, I’ve been trying to sum up what this journey has meant to me in a few lines.

Its not been easy, I keep wanting to use words like “magical”, “fantastic” or “otherworldly” to describe the journey into the Antarctic, but it simply can’t do justice to the trip as a whole in a few words.The best I can do is draw out some of the most precious moments for me from the trip.

– having the chance to honour Sir Ernest Shackleton – my personal hero – at a short ceremony at his grave,
– to see two humpback whales swimming 25 feet from the ship on Christmas day,
– to see two elephant seals – both the size of family cars fighting.

(also as an ultra-marathon runner being able to run in the Arctic as in the Antarctic was another goal I can tick off after this trip).

This has been an amazing journey, in an amazing ship, with amazing people! Thanks!”

Simon

Not Going Home – I am Home

LOGBOOK 13-01-2012 10:00

It’s difficult to talk about intense experiences. I’m English, and we are notorious for our stiff upper lips, so please excuse the lack of hyperbole. As a group, we now know how to differentiate between 5 different types of penguin by smell alone, how to fend off a ‘harem-less’ male fur seal with a raised hand and a hard stare.

And what it feels like to be helmed through fields of ice-bergs by a captain who nobody would want to be in front of in heavy traffic (‘Come on, you could get a three-masted square-rigger through that gap!’). Who will we talk to about these last weeks? Each other? I don’t know; we’ve seen the best and the worst of each other, and that’s not always a comfortable place to be, socially. Can we talk to anyone else about it? Yeesh. Antarctica bores alert!

Maybe we’ll take some time to process these sensations before we share them; the sound like thunder as a glacier creaks its way towards calving, the feeling of helplessness as the katabatic winds sweep off the ice-fields and make the ship heel even though there are no sails up (yes, yes, and they’re all beautifully furled already…), the sight of a quarter of a million penguins choosing to nest in one particular spot. Maybe we’ll tuck these memories away, hoarded like a miser’s gold.

It’s as damned sure as mustard, though, that something in our futures will trigger a memory of this. It might be a mention of some previously-unheard-of-but-now-familiar sub-antarctic island, it might be the smell of a basin full of disinfectant (don’t pack a pest and whatever you do, don’t tread on the moss!),or even just the sight of a teabag in a bar glass, but we now have within us the capacity to call up at will our own, personalised picture of the serenity that we have experienced, and this empowers us- we will be somehow better: serene, content, sorted.

Maybe that’s the whole point. I mean, who’d choose to go on a trip like this anyway? Returnees and retirees is an easy but inaccurate answer. Of the 40 voyage crew on this leg, about half fulfill those criteria, but that’s just who, not why. We are the mid-life crises, the career breaks, the bereaved and the mad-as-a-monkey-on-a-trampoline types. We’re Red, White and Blue watch, helming and looking-out in all kinds of weather, (and Green watch, lying down and groaning in all kinds of weather). We are ruffty-tuffty… oh who am I kidding? A boat full of middle-aged accountants? Nope. Not that either. I’ve been on this trip since Rotterdam in September and the only thing that’s been predictable is the quality of the soup, Yes!

So come on, Europees, and Europites and Europophiles everywhere. Learn the difference between a clew and a buntline, and one day… no, I can’t pretend that will make any difference…That’s the point. When you need a change, or a challenge, come aboard. Don’t cruise the world’s oceans in a floating block of flats with its own casino and cinema. Do it the hard way.

We’ve dodged cross-channel ferries and Brazilian fishermen, We’ve swum in the horse latitudes and in Antarctica, We’ve watched Orion cross the night sky closer and closer to the northern horizon until the southern midnight sun hid him from view. Feel every mile…

That’s why the hardest time is the morning of our departure. The monstrous bags (I never packed that much stuff, surely) , the hearty handshakes, (English- stiff upper lip, remember), the swapped addresses (if you’re ever in Outer Mongolia…), the surreality of wandering around Ushuaia, over 10,000 miles away from where you live, and bumping into people you know all day, (from the ship, obviously, unless you have a fabulous social network,) and that thing that we all say., “Safe trip home”.

And you step out of our tiny, dangerous, intense, unbelievably exciting world, back into anonymity, and the spell is broken. And you go home. And some are ready to go home, and some aren’t, and the luckiest buggers of all realise that we’re already there.

Kate

A Personal Pilgrimage on Europa

 LOGBOOK 19-12-2011 10:00

Grytviken on South Georgia contains the ruins of an old whaling station. “Old” in this case, is a matter of perspective. These particular stations were actively processing whales during the lifetimes of some of the Europa’s voyage crew.

To many people, seeing these ruins is perhaps like seeing the ruins of an old concentration camp. To them. it is a place of unimaginable horror. Without doubt, these are very sad and mournful places.

Part of my sadness is nostalgia, because unlike many people these days, I have the rare distinction of having been a child in an active whaling town. When I was very young, my town had the last active whaling station in my country – and this was as late as the 1970’s. The two primary industries in my town were whaling and salmon – and when the whaling station closed and the salmon cannery shut down, my town was devastated.

My town hunted Southern Right Whales and Humpback Whales, but especially we hunted Sperm Whales for their superior quality oil, their ambergris and the spermaceti organ they used for echo navigation. I have dim memories of watching the whale-catchers steaming out of the harbour through my father’s binoculars. I also recall watching those same boats return, towing whales behind them, and the orca’s and sharks attacking the carcass as it was towed to the station. They say the water at the end of the flensing ramps used to boil with the frenzy of feeding sharks and orcas.

My father taught me how to mix whale oil with bran & pollard to attract fish. I can still remember the unique silky smoothness of the oil and it’s peculiar smell. One day he found two enormous teeth in a friend’s garden – they were Sperm Whale teeth, six inches long and wickedly curved. To me, a boy of seven years, they felt as heavy as lead ingots.

My father polished them and used them for scrimshaw – a classical scene of a square-rigged whaler at a quay-side. One still sits above the fireplace in his lounge room and even now, as a man of forty years, it feels as heavy as a lead ingot to me.
Perhaps some of that weight is the guilt of what was done to the Southern Whale Fisheries for greed and profit.

Mikkie from Austraila.

At Sea when Steve Jobs died

It made me think that it would be nice to share a couple of words from Apple Founder Steve Jobs, an innovator, technology adventurer and creator of at least one great gadget stowed away in every cabin on Europa during this Atlantic crossing, who sadly died earlier this week.

In a speech to the graduates of Stanford University, Steve Jobs advised them: “live each day as if it were your last, as someday you’ll most certainly be right. Every day I look in the mirror and ask myself, if today were my last day on earth, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”.

And at 3.45am as the lamp by my bed switched on for the 4am watch, were it not for the fear of waking two thirds of our motley training crew who’d been up on watch all night, I would have shouted at the top of my lungs “_YES! This is what I would want to do_!” because another glorious day on the beatuiful Europa was waiting for me on deck.

YES! To more sizzling sunshine, good wind and deep blue sea
YES! To outrageously delicious food – steak and wine, biscuits, tea and cakes. Pina Coladas!
YES! To dolphins, whales and Penelope the pigeon, our voyage stowaway
YES! To thinking up new excuses for why I’m more likely to get us to St Lucia than Salvador when left alone at the helm
YES! To thinking up more excuses for why I’ve spent the past few days genuinely thinking the schools of flying fish were flocks of birds
YES! To beating the fear of heights and conquering the ‘yellow monster’ platform
YES! To handstands and gymnastic classes on the deck while Europa rocks and rolls
YES! To the waves that gurgle and lap at the porthole of our en-suite showers where we wash the salt from our hair
YES! To absorbing as much information as possible from Europa’s fantastically talented, dedicated and charming professional crew
YES! To new friends, birthdays, and ‘thanks giving’ all in our first week
YES! To the experience of a life time
YES to all this and more. Many, many, more happy sailing days aboard Europa.

Riss, CREW LOGBOOK October 2011

 

 

 

Voyage Number or start date.

February 8th 2019 from Ushuaia via Antarctica to Capetown.

 

 

What did you think of the safety briefing?

Good

 

What did you think of the accommodation onboard?

Good

 

Did you have enough personal attention?

Excellent

 

Did you think of the Captain/Skipper and the paid crew?

Excellent

 

What did you think of the food quality?

Excellent

 

How was the sailing?

Just right

 

Did you have any rough weather?

Some

 

Did you feel the voyage had?

A good mix of sailing and ashore.

 

What was the best bit?

Hard to decide. Seeing Humpback whales feeding, the green flash as the sun set – a first for me for both these things. The open ocean with only natural noises from wind sails and sea.

 

What was the worst bit?

Struggling to get out of the bunk and get dressed at 0400 to go on watch when Europa on a good angle of lean – kept me in well but hard to get out!

 

Why do you sail? It really helps us to know your specific reasons.

Love feeling close to nature away from the hustle and bustle of city life, and enjoy meeting like minded people

 

Any other comments

A fantastic trip. Tough as away from land for so long but worth it. Luckily I don’t suffer from seasickness, but many did.

 

Christine K.

C