Running on Waves

A Schooner Designed for the Open Sea

Running on Waves is a three-masted staysail schooner built to sail, carrying 36 guests on voyages that take her into open ocean and island waters in equal measure. She is the vessel of Running on Waves, a company whose name says plainly what their ship is for. She is not a replica or a themed experience. She is a contemporary sailing schooner operated by a crew that takes the sailing seriously, and the routes she sails are chosen with the same intent.

The staysail schooner rig is efficient on a broad range of points of sail and well suited to the Atlantic passages that define much of Running on Waves’s programme. Three masts give the rig redundancy and flexibility: the ship can be sailed hard in strong conditions or eased back in light airs, adapting to whatever the ocean provides.

The Atlantic as a Destination

Running on Waves sails routes that put the ocean at the centre of the experience rather than at the edge of it. Transatlantic passages, west to east in spring, east to west in autumn, are a core part of the programme. These are genuine blue-water voyages: days without sight of land, a sky full of stars, the ship moving through deep ocean swells under canvas, a crew of professionals and 36 guests sharing something that most people never experience.

The Atlantic island programmes complement the oceanic passages: the Azores, the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde archipelago. Each group offers its own version of what islands look like when approached from the sea, under sail, without the infrastructure of mass tourism between the ship and the place.

On Board

Thirty-six guests is a number that produces a particular social atmosphere. It is large enough to ensure that a voyage has variety and spontaneous conversation, small enough that every guest knows every other guest within two days. Meals are communal, the deck is open, and the crew is present rather than invisible. The experience is informal in the best sense: nothing is performed for the benefit of guests, and the guests quickly understand that they are participants in a sailing voyage rather than observers of one.

Water sports and swimming are available at anchor. The crew handles the ship; guests who want to help with the sails are generally welcome, and those who prefer to watch from the deck will find a great deal to observe on a vessel of this type.

What Running on Waves Offers

A sailing voyage on Running on Waves is defined by three things: the quality of the sailing, the character of the ship, and the places she reaches. The Atlantic itineraries give guests access to waters and islands that are otherwise difficult to reach without a long and expensive series of connections. The ship does the travelling, and the travelling is itself the point. For guests who have always wanted to cross an ocean under sail, this is where to start.