Please sign in to post.

Sailing from Italy to Spain-Windjammer ?

I'm looking to sail from Italy to Spain. Specifically a smaller boat- even a windjammer type cruise to learn how to sail. Also looking to stop at multiple ports along Mediterranean. Anyone have a recommendation? Thanks!

Posted by
9110 posts

Think this thing all way through. What are your objectives? A windjammer isn't a small boat, it's huge, usually with a steel hull and square-rigged. Passengers can pretend to help, but a five-person crew could probably take it anywhere in the world. Ten would be better. You'd have no prayer of learning anything, but you could feel important. Moving to the basics: You learn to sail with a tiller and one sheet. Maybe in a two-person open boat, better in something that's closer to a surf board with a broom stick. You have to be able to feel what's happening and see relative motion. After a couple of hundred hours, you could move up to a day sailer with two sheets. After a batch of time you'd be able to handle it yourself under supervision and maybe move up to crewing on something that could handle blue water, but you wouldn't be allowed to stand a watch alone. That's super-abbreviated boat handling. You also need to learn weather, navigation (what to you do with all three GPSs crap out and you need to reach for the sextant, how do tide tables work, etc), extreme first aid, communication, international arrival procedures, repair, variations in rules of the road and buoyage among nations, the list is endless. That and a lot more is what the person that takes you on the little trip from Italy to Spain is going to know cold.

Posted by
9110 posts

What's your puke factor? A minor squall can put you in the harness. You'll be heeling port and starboard thirty degrees past the vertical every thirty seconds - - and slamming into waves that rattle your teeth about as often. The boat won't give a rat's rear bumper, but you might. How about the money? A bareboat runs a couple of grand a week. Triple that for a crewed boat. From about Rome to about Barcelona, more or less hugging the coast, is a thousand miles. At ten knots that's a hundred hours, four days sailing non-stop. Toss in some stops and that's a couple of weeks. And you've got to pay something to get the boat back. And you've got to buy food and drink. Meditate a bit. There's an answer somewhere. But there's got to be a better question as well.

Posted by
16362 posts

I'm no expert, but some of my friends in Italy are and have boats. One sailed from Copenhagen to La Spezia (his home) by himself. First of all they all told me that it takes at least 36 hours from Civitavecchia or anywhere near there to Corsica. That's just 1/3 of the way to Barcelona. You also need to every experienced because there is heavy ferry traffic and they confirmed that those huge ships are hard if you hit them. The mouths of Bonifacio are notoriosly windy and dangerous.
Take a look. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=m3ehGHRLeI4&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dm3ehGHRLeI4

Posted by
922 posts

There are 'tall ship' sailing cruises, including Windjammer cruises in the Mediterranean. But, as Ed rightly says, you won't 'learn to sail' on one of them, though they would offer you a chance to see how a large sailing ship is handled on open water, and the passengers are able to pretend to assist the crew. Some sailings are specified for experienced sailors only. See the links below for the many itineraries that are offered. These are huge ships, though the experience is different than regular pleasure cruises. However, if I were contemplating such a voyage on the Mediterranean, I would sign up first for one of the shorter tall ship voyages (3-4 days) that set sail fairly frequently off the Atlantic seaboard, including the coast of Maine. That would give you a chance to see if you like being on board a sailing vessel and how well you could tolerate it physically. I've sailed a lot in Long Island Sound, and it is wonderful - of course on a tiny boat by comparison. Sailing on blue water aboard a tall ship is on my bucket list too. Here are the links: http://www.sailingshipadventures.com/index.cfm?event=tall_ship_cruises http://www.sailingshipadventures.com/index.cfm?event=GetVesselDetails&VesselID=95