Russian billionaire oligarch Oleg Burlakov recently spent around $200 million to purchase the Black Pearl, a new sailing yacht built by Oceanco Yachts. The yacht has three free-standing DynaRig masts and is strongly reminiscent of the three-masted Dynarig Maltese Falcon, launched in 1990. The … Continue reading
Category Archives: Ships
Red Hook WaterStories delves into the rich and varied past and present of the waterfront of the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. If you haven’t discovered the site, a project of PortSide New York, be sure to check it out. Here … Continue reading
We are several months late in posting about Tallinn Maritime Days from last July. The port of Tallinn, on the Gulf of Finland, is the capital and largest city of Estonia and hosted 50 sailing ships in this summer’s Tallships … Continue reading
MV Doulos once held the title of the oldest operating passenger liner. Now 103 years old, the historic ship may be close to beginning a new life as a shoreside hotel in the resort town of Bintan, Indonesia. When the refurbished ship … Continue reading
A derelict wooden boat washed ashore on Monday on Miyazawa beach in the northwest of Japan’s main island Honshu. The boat’s only cargo was eight skeletons. Evidence suggests that the boat and the bones came from North Korea. This boat is … Continue reading
In 1793, Captain James Colnett of the merchant ship Rattler placed a barrel a short distance from a bay on the island of Floreana in the Galapagos archipelago. Captain Colnett was a British Naval officer, an explorer, and a maritime … Continue reading
The news of the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan, missing since a week ago last Wednesday, has been uniformly grim. A report on Tuesday of a “heat stain” picked up by a US search place has come to naught. More … Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving for those on this side of the pond and below the 49th parallel. (The Canadians celebrated the holiday in October.) Here is repost of a story I think is well worth retelling. In the United States, Thanksgiving only … Continue reading
A US Navy plane may have located the position of the Argentine Navy submarine ARA San Juan which has been missing since last Wednesday. Sensors aboard the plane detected a ‘heat stain’ at 230 ft below the surface, roughly 185 miles … Continue reading
The Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa design teams have unveiled the AC75, a concept design for the 36th America’s Cup in 2021. The design is a 75 foot long foiling monohull. Most notably, the AC75 lacks a keel. … Continue reading
Simon Speirs, a 60 year old sailor from Bristol, UK, has died in the Clipper Round the World Race. On Saturday, Speirs, was washed overboard while handling sails on the foredeck of the Clipper CV30 Great Britain, while sailing in … Continue reading
ARA San Juan, an Argentine Navy diesel-electric submarine, was on a routine mission when it went silent on Wednesday. Communications ended while the submarine was en route,with a crew of 44, from Ushuaia naval base, near the southern tip of South America, … Continue reading
François Gabart has set a new solo 24-hour speed record of an extraordinary 851 miles sailed in 24 hours on his 98′ trimaran MACIF. Gabart set the new record sailing in the South Atlantic, averaging 35.4 knots. Gabarts’ record is only about … Continue reading
The wreck of the Chilean steamship, SS Itata, has been located in 650 feet of water off the port of Coquimbo, in Elqui Province, in northern Chile. The ship sank in a storm on August 28, 1922 with an estimated loss of … Continue reading
The US Navy has rightfully been undertaking a considerable review and revaluation of the problems that led to the recent ship collisions between the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain with commercial vessels, resulting in the deaths of 17 sailors. … Continue reading
SS Edmund Fitzgerald, an American Great Lakes ore carrier, sank in Lake Superior in a storm on November 10, 1975, 42 years ago today. The crew of 29 were lost when the freighter sank loaded with 26,000 tons of taconite, iron ore pellets, in 530 … Continue reading
There was a joke, of sorts, in the Clipper Round the World Race, that in the over two decades of racing around the world, only one boat has ever sunk. It was the boat least likely to sink, at least … Continue reading
Here is a fascinating tour of the Volvo Ocean 65Team Brunel, one of seven identical yachts now racing around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race. The Volvo Ocean 65s are high-performance one-design racers created by Farr Yacht Design and … Continue reading
An update on a previous post — in August, we posted about Pen Hadow’s latest expedition to the Arctic. Hadow is best known for being the only person to walk solo to the North Pole and back without being resupplied. … Continue reading
How dirty are cruise ships? How much pollution do they really create? It is hard to tell. Several years ago we posted about a claim by the Friends of the Earth which asserted that cruise ships “flushed more than a … Continue reading