Sailing tips

Solo travellers can set sail on an array of solo-friendly cruise lines to mingle at sea or enjoy solace aboard a swanky ship.

Spanish tourism is booming. According to its National Institute of Statistics, April saw a record 7.8 million visitors enter the country, which received 24 million travellers overall in the first quarter of 2024, up 18 per cent from the previous year.  

Bessie Ellen will be calling in at fourteen ports around the UK, where there will be the opportunity to climb aboard, tour the ship and meet her skipper, Nikki Alford. A passionate sea farer, Nikki has owned and sailed Bessie Ellen for 24 years, lovingly restoring and caring for her. Listed on the National Historic Ships register, Bessie’s remarkable heritage has seen her quite literally witness the changing tides of history. Built in Plymouth in 1904 she started life as a cargo ship, crossing treacherous waters to transport goods between Ireland, Wales and the West Counties. As trade dwindled during the second World War, Bessie found herself heading to the Baltic after being purchased by a Danish captain, Moller, in 1947. This second chapter of her life saw her re-named whilst undergoing a radical transformation with the creation of a large steel hatch, reduction in rigging and a large Hundested single cylinder engine installed. Sadly, by the 1970’s, running her became unprofitable and she lay to rest until being restored back to life nearly 100 years after her initial creation.

Tall sailing ships seem to turn back the clock, evoking a bygone time when merchants, admirals, and pirates ruled the seas. Wildly evocative, with billowing white sails overhead and hulls directed toward points unknown, their dynamic form captures not only the wind, but the imagination.

A massive German cruise ship is sailing back and forth around the English Channel, searching for a crew member the captain believes fell overboard early Sunday morning.

While Thai islands such as Phuket, Koh Phi Phi and Koh Samui may be popular for their fly-and-flop beach scenes, there are dozens of others that cater to travellers seeking a more adventurous getaway. Scattered between the Gulf of Thailand to the east of the mainland and the Andaman Sea to the west, these jungle- and palm-cloaked islands are framed by deep bays, coral-rich waters and limestone karst cliffs riddled with caves ripe for exploration by water or on foot.

Next year, Silversea Cruises will operate the vacation of a lifetime: a "pole-to-pole" cruise. And at a cool $95,000 per person, this 125-day trip will also sail as the most expensive cruise of 2024. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jeff Farschman, a 74-year-old retiree who lives in Dover, Delaware. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

China’s first international cruise in three years set sail on Friday, heading from Shanghai to Japan in a boost for the country’s beleaguered cruise industry following the pandemic, state media reported.

On Monday 14 August, when the tide is right, an antique sailing ship will manoeuvre through the lock of Plymouth’s historic Sutton harbour and point herself south-west towards the Canary Islands. It will be the start of a two-year voyage around the world taking in 32 ports and involving thousands of people in a groundbreaking geographical project, Darwin200, which aims, among other things, to inspire the environmental leaders and scientists of the future.

Soon after the turn of the 20th century, rumors began making their way west that man-eating lizards, 10 feet long and weighing up to 350 pounds, with fearsome talons, chain mail scales, and serrated teeth dripping with venom, had been found living on a remote Indonesian island. The source of the reports was Lieutenant Jacques Karel Henri van Steyn van Hensbroek, a Dutch colonial officer, who revealed the existence of Varanus komodoensis, the world's largest extant reptile, in 1910. But it was a 1926 American Museum of Natural History expedition to capture live specimens, led by a flamboyant Vanderbilt scion named William Douglas Burden, that caused interest in the creature to explode in popular culture. Burden's gripping account, Dragon Lizards of Komodo, inspired his friend Merian C. Cooper to dream up the primordial Skull Island for his classic 1933 film, King Kong. Civilization was steaming forward, and yet, in that era, the map still seemed to hold places that hid ancient secrets.

Given that Croatia's idyllic Adriatic coast offers over 200km of azure waters speckled with more than 1000 islands, it'll come as no surprise that it's one of Europe’s most popular sailing destinations.

As our bus bounced down the winding dirt road, through the Mars-like landscape of King George Island in the South Shetland Islands, a cargo container shelter came into view. On the front porch a crowd was gathering, waving eagerly. At first, I thought they might be residents of the Chilean Frei base, which maintains the rudimentary gravel runway on which we just landed. Scientists, perhaps, or support staff that keep the base functional. But then I saw her—the venerable marine biologist Dr. Sylvia Earle, shepherding passengers from Aurora Expedition's Sylvia Earle, the new polar expedition ship that had just completed its first sailing. We were in the midst of switching places: those on the bus about to embark upon our Antarctic adventure, and those on the porch returning home after theirs. Earle had been onboard to christen her namesake vessel.

Ropes clinking on the mast, uninterrupted horizons met by clear waters and deserted coves that invite you in for secluded swims — sailing holidays allow families to leave their daily routines behind and explore the world from a new perspective. However, if you're new to the seas it can be difficult to know where to start.