Sea Cloud II

Sea Cloud II is a sailing ship. Not a cruise ship with decorative canvas, not a motor yacht with a stay-sail for the brochure photograph, a three-masted barque whose crew go aloft and set twenty-three sails by hand whenever the wind allows it. Everything else on this page is secondary to that, including the fact that Lindblad does not own her.

The rig

She was laid down at Astilleros Gondán in Asturias in June 1998, launched in March 1999 and completed in January 2001. The brief was to build a modern hull around a genuine 1930s-style rig, modeled on Marjorie Merriweather Post’s 1931 Sea Cloud, which Sea Cloud Cruises still operates.

The foremast and mainmast are square-rigged in the traditional way and the mizzen is gaff-rigged, which on paper makes her a barque with a slightly conservative sail plan. In practice the masts stand 188 feet above the water and carry about 29,000 square feet of canvas across twenty-three sails, and the owners argue, credibly, that modern spar dimensions and modern cloth get her the performance of a larger four-master. There are no furling motors on the yards. Setting and handing sail is done by hand and it is the reason people stand at the rail watching instead of going below.

Two diesels are aboard for when the wind is not, and the maximum on engines is around thirteen knots. The point is that they are the backup and not the plan.

Whose ship she is

Sea Cloud Cruises owns and operates her out of Hamburg; she is Malta-flagged and registered at Valletta. Lindblad charters her, sells her under the National Geographic banner, and puts its own expedition leaders, naturalists and National Geographic experts aboard for those voyages. That is a real difference from a polar ship in the Lindblad fleet: the seamanship, the crew and the ship’s character are Sea Cloud’s, and the program layered on top is Lindblad’s.

The capacity numbers move slightly with the charter. Sea Cloud sells up to ninety-four guests in forty-seven outside cabins; Lindblad sells eighty-eight in forty-four. There are sixteen junior suites and two owner’s suites among them. Every cabin is an outside cabin, and none of them has a balcony, because a square-rigger has nowhere sensible to put one.

Public rooms are four decks’ worth and deliberately modest: a single-seating restaurant, a lounge with a Steinway, a library, a small spa with sauna and fitness room, and a lido deck. Three Zodiacs and a swim platform come down at anchor. She draws under eighteen feet, which is what gets her into the bays that the itineraries are built around.

Where she actually sails

Two seasons. In winter she works the eastern Caribbean, mostly out of Bridgetown in Barbados with some sailings from Philipsburg on Sint Maarten, the run down through the Grenadines and the Leewards, where the trade winds are reliable and the passages between islands are short enough to be sailed rather than motored. In summer she is in the Mediterranean, out of Valletta and Athens, on seven- to ten-night voyages.

Who she suits

Anyone who would rather be on a ship that sails than on a ship that carries passengers. The best hours aboard are the ones under canvas with the engines off, and if that prospect does not move you, the rest of her (good food, a quiet lounge, eighty-eight people) is not worth the fare.

She is wrong for anyone who needs stability, space or predictability. A sailing ship heels, the itinerary bends to the weather, the cabins are small by modern standards and there is no balcony to retreat to. There is no casino, no show, no pool worth the name, and nothing at all to do indoors on a gray day except read. Families with small children are a poor fit; so is anyone for whom a set of stairs and a moving deck is a problem.