At least no one says, “Don’t look down.” The rigging of this modern sailing ship is taut steel and new rope, so the first 20 metres of my ascent are not bad. “Not like that,” says third mate Stefan Wronski, his hands posed as if gripping handlebars. He turns them vertical. “Climb like this.” says an article published in Todayuknews.
World’s largest square -rigger
Stefan is Hollywood’s idea of a sailor: tall, handsome, iron handshake. He was a journalist until a dull assignment to write about kitchens inspired a dramatic career change and he became a rigger — when not crewing these ships, he builds them. This airy maze of cables and lurching drops is a home to him.
The five-masted Golden Horizon is the world’s largest square-rigger, brand-new but a near-replica of the 1913 barque France II. She is 162 metres long and can unfurl more than 6,300 sq metres of sails — double that of the celebrated clipper Cutty Sark. Her maiden passenger voyage offers dozens of activities and entertainments, from lectures to scuba diving. Climbing the rigging is also an option.
A Marvellous frame
The shrouds are cables anchored to the hull, holding the mast in place. They pass two platforms on the way to the sky. The first easily has room for four. You reach it by following Stefan’s instructions: “Don’t fall off. Go slow. If you get scared, stop. Keep three points of contact with the ship.” Transferring from rigging to platform, you grip with terrified strength.
“OK?” asks captain Mariusz Szalek. He is not wearing a safety harness and it was he who announced that to understand sailing ships, you must climb the mast. Captain Mariusz is especially jolly up here. Anchored in the Solent, just east of Cowes, we have views of the sea, the Isle of Wight and the south coast of England, framed in rigging, views that few have seen in a century.
“Wonderful!” I squawk.
Stefan eases out along the yard — a horizontal bar attached to the mast from which the sails hang. Standing on a black piece of rope, bowed over the yard like an extra in Mutiny on the Bounty, Stefan crabs sideways. Please don’t invite us to join you, I pray.
An aerial shot of the Golden Horizon © Joseph Thompson Photography
“We go on?” The captain gestures upwards. Way up above is a tiny platform below the last section of the mast. The rigging there narrows to a thin vertical ladder leading to an obvious overhang below the crow’s nest. I open my mouth.
“Yes! Definitely!” says a voice. I turn to my friend, who is taking photographs, with a sickly grin. She is crazy.
“Sure!” I squeak.
Stefan reappears beside us. “Go as far as your feet can find rungs, then hold on and you are hanging outwards. Then pull yourself up and over.”
The captain and my friend have already gone. “Great!” I croak, thinking, Don’t look down.
A delightful voyage
At Harwich, the first morning, her masts lancing the blue 60 metres above her deck, the world’s largest square-rigger is beautiful, her bridge sleek as a superyacht’s and bow-raked and pointed like a speedboat. In the minibus from the mandatory Covid test are Elena, a historian of Russia, and her husband Lars, a hydro-engineer. We exchange excited rumours. “She was arrested in Dover over a bill!” Elena claims. A group from Trade Wind Voyages, the operating company, are disembarking.
“Is it true?” I ask them.
“Yes,” one says, “But it’s all sorted now.”
Golden Horizon is brand-new but, like all great ships, already comes with her own back-story. She was commissioned by cruise line Star Clippers and built by the Brodosplit yard in Croatia; work began back in 2015 and the ship was originally due to enter service in late 2017. But after delays and a financial dispute, the yard ended up keeping the vessel, instead offering it for charter to the new British company Tradewind Voyages.
On July 15, after a “dress rehearsal” sailing along the south coast of England, the ship arrived in Dover, only to be detained at the request of Star Clippers, who claim the yard owe an outstanding debt. According to Star Clippers, a payment was received the next day, and the ship was released and allowed to continue on her way.
The Golden Horizon at sea. She can unfurl more than 63,000 square metres of sails © Joseph Thompson Photography
Like many sailors, I am superstitious about ships — you know if they are good or bad the moment you step on deck. Happily, I have never set foot on a more gleeful vessel. She has a piratical spirit. Cathedral-high and yacht-swishy, she glints with benign mischief. The same spark is plain in Captain Mariusz’s eyes as he welcomes us aboard.
“Do you like her, captain?”
“Like her? I love her! She’s my second wife.”
“How does she handle?”
“We will see! Ha!”
He reveals that for optimum speed she needs 40 knots of wind, and that he brought her across the Bay of Biscay in a force-eight gale. To be on her bridge when she is canted with the wind and flying like that is now one of my life’s ambitions. With the ship heeling and pitching, slashing spray and the swimming pools’ water sloshing across the decks, an intense experience would be guaranteed.
A delightful cabin steward confides: “She’s like a small village. On a big cruise ship, you can get up to all kinds of things!” A big cruise ship is more like a sizeable town, she says, with greater opportunities for friendships and more among the crew. “Here everyone knows everything!” she laughs. Despite this, like all the crew I meet, she is happy and excited to be here: there is a feeling that we are all in the same boat.
The ‘operatic scoop of space’ of Golden Horizon’s dining room
I have a fabulous massage in the spa from expert masseuse Ana Franic. I use the excellent gym. I eat extremely well in a dining room that is like an elegant and compact theatre, balconies and stairs descending through an operatic scoop of space, with one of the three swimming pools suspended above. I take notes through an engrossing lecture on ships, winds and tides, delivered with great charm and expertise by crewman Ash Doogan.
But most of the voyage I spend on the bridge, watching and listening, entranced. When they are not manoeuvring in port or taking on pilots, passengers are welcome to watch the navigation officers work.
“Let go the spring line aft!” orders the captain, and the last rope is loosed. With stay sails set — scalene triangles between the masts — and the diesel electric engine running silently (as far as the passengers are concerned, there is no noise or vibration in the decks) Golden Horizon, all coiled power and elegance, puts to sea.
“Midships!” calls the pilot.
“Midships sir!” responds the helmsman instantly, though our pilot out of Harwich is Joanna Stueven, originally from Hamburg. She calls the course changes, with the captain looking on. Despite a professional reserve, she is clearly impressed by the way Golden Horizon handles, answering her helm and changing pace and course like a dancer.
I have travelled seaward along this channel before, between the marker buoys, which the chart shows by name. They sound like the overture of a maritime symphony, scored in sandbanks and seamarks around the globe — South West Tail of Rough, Cork Sand, Bawdsey. Back then, I was on a giant Maersk container ship bound for California via Suez. Though our cruise goes only along England’s south coast, it feels even more exciting.
“When you see her sailing,” says the captain, “you will see a poem.”
The sea reclines in a reverie of summer blue. We glide into one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes tracked by Dover Coastguard, which asks each vessel where she last called, how many passengers and crew she is carrying and whether she has any defects or damage.
magnificent – Golden horizon
With 304 people on board, we are not quite at capacity: when full, Golden Horizon can carry 272 guests and 159 crew. I meet a hip specialist, a retired pilot of Canberra bombers, a retired naval officer, a former mechanic who was in charge of the Sea Harrier planes during the 1982 Falklands war, a lady who sold advertising space for radio stations, and many leisure sailors and experienced cruisers. All agree that the ship is gorgeous, though some become frustrated, later, when storms prevent the tenders launching for promised trips ashore in Dartmouth and Torquay.
From our port side Alf Pollak, a roll-on, roll-off cargo carrier looking like a fat white baton on passage to Rotterdam from Purfleet hails us on the radio.
“Golden Horizon, what is your intention?”
“We are under sail,” Stefan returns. Despite the fact that we are also using the engine, a ship under sail always has precedence. The plan is that Golden Horizon will be powered by the wind about 70 per cent of the time.
work , trade and travel
“I will alter course,” Alf Pollak says, resigned. They wish each other “good watch.” We carry on serenely, our masts and yards lit as though for Christmas with festive white lightbulbs. Darkness falls. Jupiter shines bright. Through binoculars, its moons are white sparks. A cargo plane that I track via a smartphone app passes high above us, from Frankfurt bound for Chicago. I marvel at the doings of the sea and sky at night.
Calais and Ramsgate fall away behind. A vessel guarding a wind farm tells a yacht to turn to northwesterly: “You are entering a restricted area.”
“Which way? I have no engine,” the yacht returns, fraught and exhausted.
I turn in. When I come up again to greet the second day, the sun is a golden flare, our sails are set and the sea south of Hastings throngs with crab potters and cruise ships. Tankers and cargo carriers are bound for Brazil, Cork and Gdansk. We surge through the sea’s anthologies of work, trade and travel. Captain Mariusz was right: with our canvas out and filled we are indeed a poem.
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Source: Todayuknews
