Post by ferryfast admin on Mar 8, 2006 0:01:48 GMT -5
Mast Transit
Exploring the Mediterranean by sail takes you where the wind blows (and sometimes where it doesn't).
By Karl Zimmermann
Special Correspondent
Sun Sentinel-Orlando, FL
www.sun-sentinel.com/
March 5, 2006
On shipboard, I've sometimes had this odd wish. Standing at the rail watching some excursion boat or ferry pacing us, I'd yearn to be transported (but just for a moment) to that humble vessel to revel in the beautiful sight of my ship under way.
Star Clippers, operator of three handsome tall ships for cruise passengers, obviously understands this hankering. In July, cruising in the Mediterranean on the Royal Clipper, which its owner calls the largest full-rigged tall ship in the world, passengers were invited to clamber down into the ship's two tenders with our cameras.
While these boats circled and countless camcorders whirred and shutters clicked (and digital cameras did whatever they do), the Royal Clipper's deck crew began to hoist the sails -- first the four jibs and 11 staysails, then, mast by mast, the 26 imposing squaresails, and the single gaff-rigged spanker. Finally, glowing in the warm light of a late Mediterranean afternoon, just off the picturesque island of Panarea, the picture was complete.
With these 42 Dacron sails billowing in the light breeze, the five-masted, 439-foot-long ship was majestic indeed. Completed in 2000 by the Merwede shipyard in Rotterdam, the Royal Clipper was inspired by the Preussen, flagship of Germany's Flying P Line, built nearly a century earlier, in 1902. The Preussen was a five-masted, full-rigged ship, and the Royal Clipper is the first such vessel to be built since the Preussen.
My wife, Laurel, and I had sailed in the Caribbean a decade earlier aboard the Star Clipper, one of the twins -- smaller than the Royal Clipper, and square-rigged barquentines rather than full-rigged -- that were the line's first ships. This time, in honor of Laurel's birthday, daughters Emily and Jenn and son-in-law John, along with Laurel's aunt, uncle and cousin: Joan, Paul and Nancy all joined us.
Right at 10 p.m., the ship slipped its lines and eased out of Civitavecchia (the port of Rome) toward the sea, accompanied by heroic, soaring recorded music: Conquest of Paradise, from the movie 1492. Dominique Jacobs, the cruise director, recruited passengers to help raise the sails -- an activity more ritualistic than necessary, since the deck crew of 16 (from among a total staff of 104, of 28 nationalities) easily could have handled the job on its own, thanks to the ship's electric winches and self-furling mainsails.
After a day at sea, we arrived at a dazzlingly white little port town, all stucco and stone, on the island of Favignana, at the far western end of Sicily. Favignana's claim to fame is tonno (tuna); until recently it was the site of the mattanza, an annual ritualistic tuna kill of huge proportions and not a little brutality that had survived since the Middle Ages.
The Royal Clipper's tenders docked near some of the black, unpowered arks that were used as harpooning platforms. Now retired, these boats had also buoyed the complex systems of nets that would capture the tuna at spawning season and lead them into the camera della morte (the room of death). The imposing but derelict buildings of the tuna fishery, tonnara, line one side of the harbor; they're scheduled for rehabbing for functions far less violent than the mattanza.
The town was sunbaked and deserted during the siesta hours of our visit, with awnings out and shutters closed, though the breezes off countless miles of ocean kept the afternoon pleasant. We passed shops vending all manner of tonno: different cuts, packed in olive oil or brine, dried or not, ground or not, smoked or not. There were also bottarga di tonno (eggs) and lattume di tonno (the male seminal fluid).
Back aboard the Royal Clipper, we listened to the anchor chain clank in link by link as we prepared to set sail for Malta. A sailor scurried to drop the black ball, which had been twirling in the wind, so any nearby craft would know that we were no longer at anchor. Other crew members winched the jibs taut, then the staysails behind the bridge, and eventually the squaresails.
Sitting on the after deck in the late-day sun, with book in hand, I could feel the rumble through the deck and see the churn and swirl of wake that left no doubt of major motor assist. We'd been spoiled by the amount of pure sailing on our Star Clipper cruise out of Barbados, and the lack of it would be a disappointment aboard the Royal Clipper.
"The Caribbean is much better for sailing," Dominique told me later when I mentioned this to her. "Particularly on this side of Italy, there's very little wind."
Our time aboard was filled with pleasures nonetheless, and one of them was simply the feel of being aboard a sailing vessel of the Royal Clipper's imposing presence. Though the bridge was closed during maneuvering, passengers could lurk right behind to watch and listen. Approaching Siracusa -- on the south shore of Sicily, with Etna dimly visible behind the city through the haze of summer heat -- the call and response of captain and quartermaster were the routine, everyday drama of work at sea.
"Five astarboard."
"Five astarboard, sir."
"Amidships."
"Amidships, sir."
"Steady as she goes." With deliberate care the ship passed the battlements that once protected the harbor, then nuzzled up against the pier.
"Did you climb the mast?" Dominique asked one afternoon.
"No, I sent my proxy," I said, nodding at Jenn, who, along with John, had gone aloft. At set times, passengers were encouraged to climb to the lower crow's nest on a mainmast -- tethered, and closely supervised.
"Me neither," she said with a sheepish smile, proving that not even the multitasking Dominique could do everything. Among the things she can do is speak six languages in addition to her native Flemish. Educated as a graphic artist, for now she was very happy at sea. "It's a lifestyle more than a job, really," she said. "Or even an addiction."
The Royal Clipper's interior aesthetics are clubby and traditional, dominated by dark woods -- as wainscoting in our cabin, and throughout the split-level Clipper Dining Room, library and Piano Bar (where we had nary a cocktail, so attractive was the open-air Tropical Bar). The feeling was much more "ship" than "boat."
The dining room is the hub. Above it an atrium slices through both Clipper Deck and Main Deck. Its ceiling is the glass bottom of the largest of the three mini-swimming pools on Sun Deck; this arrangement is both a playful curiosity and a welcome source of natural light for the dining room.
Seating was open at all meals. Breakfasts and lunches were lavish buffets laid out in the central, dropped section of the room, where two large round tables for eight replaced the serving tables at dinner. One of these we managed to score on successive nights early in the cruise. Franjo, our waiter from Dubrovnik, made those dinners especially pleasant.
With 223 passengers, the ship was essentially full. Our fellow travelers came from 18 countries; 73 from the United States made up just over a third of the passenger list.
The food was generally fine. Soups were uniformly good: potato and artichoke garnished with walnuts, cream of tomato with fennel. Other highlights: rack of lamb crusted with garlic breadcrumbs and served with ratatouille, osso bucco, duck breast, mullet, red snapper, grilled vegetable lasagna. For lunch, in addition to the smorgasbord, there was always a carved specialty (salmon en croute was delicious) and a pasta bar. Desserts were such light pastries as mango Napoleon and various fruit mousses, such as apple and lemon.
The day after Favagnana came two calls on Malta: Gozo and Valletta. From Gozo, the ship's tenders took us to the romantic-sounding Blue Lagoon, where we could swim and sunbathe. After clambering over a lava field, we reached the small beach, then realized that we should have brought cash to rent chairs and an umbrella. However, we were intrigued by a tunnel in the lava rock, through which we could swim to the open ocean. Where, we discovered, jellyfish waited.
Arriving to the capital, we glided into the quintessentially picturesque Great Harbor. Once off the ship, we hiked up into the walled city, where the architectural keynote was iron-clad balconies affixed to masonry structures. Reeking with history, this World Heritage City -- founded, in its current incarnation, in the 16th century by Jean Parisot de la Volette of the Knights of St. John -- is rich in squares, courtyards, gardens and cafes.
Next came Siracusa, filled with Greek and Roman antiquities -- sometimes just fenced-off piles of rubble with no explanation beyond "archeological site." But a comprehensible Temple of Zeus stands right on the edge of the market in the old section of town. In a park north of the port are a largely intact Roman amphitheater and Greek theater.
Subsequent calls were at Panarea, the smallest of the Iolian Islands, and Ventotene, near the Italian mainland. "It gives a very Greek impression," Dominique said of Panarea, "but it is absolutely Italian." We climbed through the steep and winding streets, so narrow that only golf carts could serve as taxis. Leaving in the late afternoon, we slowed and stopped abreast the nearby cone-shaped island of Stromboli, a very active volcano which belched brownish smoke from its crater. A frail white village hunkered obliviously.
The following evening, leaving Ventotene, the breeze freshened, and there was a vitality to the weather and a clarity to the skies. "Perhaps we'll have some pure sailing now," I thought. But the Royal Clipper began to bob like a cork as the vessel motored through genuinely heavy seas. Our group ranged from queasy to ill, as a paradisiacal week turned briefly tumultuous. The next morning, when we all disembarked at Civitavecchia, it was with mixed feelings of short-term relief for the seasick and melancholy in the longer view for all of us, sorry that a special occasion and unique voyage were over.
Karl Zimmermann's last story for Travel was on Isle of Man. He lives in Oradell, N.J.
Exploring the Mediterranean by sail takes you where the wind blows (and sometimes where it doesn't).
By Karl Zimmermann
Special Correspondent
Sun Sentinel-Orlando, FL
www.sun-sentinel.com/
March 5, 2006
On shipboard, I've sometimes had this odd wish. Standing at the rail watching some excursion boat or ferry pacing us, I'd yearn to be transported (but just for a moment) to that humble vessel to revel in the beautiful sight of my ship under way.
Star Clippers, operator of three handsome tall ships for cruise passengers, obviously understands this hankering. In July, cruising in the Mediterranean on the Royal Clipper, which its owner calls the largest full-rigged tall ship in the world, passengers were invited to clamber down into the ship's two tenders with our cameras.
While these boats circled and countless camcorders whirred and shutters clicked (and digital cameras did whatever they do), the Royal Clipper's deck crew began to hoist the sails -- first the four jibs and 11 staysails, then, mast by mast, the 26 imposing squaresails, and the single gaff-rigged spanker. Finally, glowing in the warm light of a late Mediterranean afternoon, just off the picturesque island of Panarea, the picture was complete.
With these 42 Dacron sails billowing in the light breeze, the five-masted, 439-foot-long ship was majestic indeed. Completed in 2000 by the Merwede shipyard in Rotterdam, the Royal Clipper was inspired by the Preussen, flagship of Germany's Flying P Line, built nearly a century earlier, in 1902. The Preussen was a five-masted, full-rigged ship, and the Royal Clipper is the first such vessel to be built since the Preussen.
My wife, Laurel, and I had sailed in the Caribbean a decade earlier aboard the Star Clipper, one of the twins -- smaller than the Royal Clipper, and square-rigged barquentines rather than full-rigged -- that were the line's first ships. This time, in honor of Laurel's birthday, daughters Emily and Jenn and son-in-law John, along with Laurel's aunt, uncle and cousin: Joan, Paul and Nancy all joined us.
Right at 10 p.m., the ship slipped its lines and eased out of Civitavecchia (the port of Rome) toward the sea, accompanied by heroic, soaring recorded music: Conquest of Paradise, from the movie 1492. Dominique Jacobs, the cruise director, recruited passengers to help raise the sails -- an activity more ritualistic than necessary, since the deck crew of 16 (from among a total staff of 104, of 28 nationalities) easily could have handled the job on its own, thanks to the ship's electric winches and self-furling mainsails.
After a day at sea, we arrived at a dazzlingly white little port town, all stucco and stone, on the island of Favignana, at the far western end of Sicily. Favignana's claim to fame is tonno (tuna); until recently it was the site of the mattanza, an annual ritualistic tuna kill of huge proportions and not a little brutality that had survived since the Middle Ages.
The Royal Clipper's tenders docked near some of the black, unpowered arks that were used as harpooning platforms. Now retired, these boats had also buoyed the complex systems of nets that would capture the tuna at spawning season and lead them into the camera della morte (the room of death). The imposing but derelict buildings of the tuna fishery, tonnara, line one side of the harbor; they're scheduled for rehabbing for functions far less violent than the mattanza.
The town was sunbaked and deserted during the siesta hours of our visit, with awnings out and shutters closed, though the breezes off countless miles of ocean kept the afternoon pleasant. We passed shops vending all manner of tonno: different cuts, packed in olive oil or brine, dried or not, ground or not, smoked or not. There were also bottarga di tonno (eggs) and lattume di tonno (the male seminal fluid).
Back aboard the Royal Clipper, we listened to the anchor chain clank in link by link as we prepared to set sail for Malta. A sailor scurried to drop the black ball, which had been twirling in the wind, so any nearby craft would know that we were no longer at anchor. Other crew members winched the jibs taut, then the staysails behind the bridge, and eventually the squaresails.
Sitting on the after deck in the late-day sun, with book in hand, I could feel the rumble through the deck and see the churn and swirl of wake that left no doubt of major motor assist. We'd been spoiled by the amount of pure sailing on our Star Clipper cruise out of Barbados, and the lack of it would be a disappointment aboard the Royal Clipper.
"The Caribbean is much better for sailing," Dominique told me later when I mentioned this to her. "Particularly on this side of Italy, there's very little wind."
Our time aboard was filled with pleasures nonetheless, and one of them was simply the feel of being aboard a sailing vessel of the Royal Clipper's imposing presence. Though the bridge was closed during maneuvering, passengers could lurk right behind to watch and listen. Approaching Siracusa -- on the south shore of Sicily, with Etna dimly visible behind the city through the haze of summer heat -- the call and response of captain and quartermaster were the routine, everyday drama of work at sea.
"Five astarboard."
"Five astarboard, sir."
"Amidships."
"Amidships, sir."
"Steady as she goes." With deliberate care the ship passed the battlements that once protected the harbor, then nuzzled up against the pier.
"Did you climb the mast?" Dominique asked one afternoon.
"No, I sent my proxy," I said, nodding at Jenn, who, along with John, had gone aloft. At set times, passengers were encouraged to climb to the lower crow's nest on a mainmast -- tethered, and closely supervised.
"Me neither," she said with a sheepish smile, proving that not even the multitasking Dominique could do everything. Among the things she can do is speak six languages in addition to her native Flemish. Educated as a graphic artist, for now she was very happy at sea. "It's a lifestyle more than a job, really," she said. "Or even an addiction."
The Royal Clipper's interior aesthetics are clubby and traditional, dominated by dark woods -- as wainscoting in our cabin, and throughout the split-level Clipper Dining Room, library and Piano Bar (where we had nary a cocktail, so attractive was the open-air Tropical Bar). The feeling was much more "ship" than "boat."
The dining room is the hub. Above it an atrium slices through both Clipper Deck and Main Deck. Its ceiling is the glass bottom of the largest of the three mini-swimming pools on Sun Deck; this arrangement is both a playful curiosity and a welcome source of natural light for the dining room.
Seating was open at all meals. Breakfasts and lunches were lavish buffets laid out in the central, dropped section of the room, where two large round tables for eight replaced the serving tables at dinner. One of these we managed to score on successive nights early in the cruise. Franjo, our waiter from Dubrovnik, made those dinners especially pleasant.
With 223 passengers, the ship was essentially full. Our fellow travelers came from 18 countries; 73 from the United States made up just over a third of the passenger list.
The food was generally fine. Soups were uniformly good: potato and artichoke garnished with walnuts, cream of tomato with fennel. Other highlights: rack of lamb crusted with garlic breadcrumbs and served with ratatouille, osso bucco, duck breast, mullet, red snapper, grilled vegetable lasagna. For lunch, in addition to the smorgasbord, there was always a carved specialty (salmon en croute was delicious) and a pasta bar. Desserts were such light pastries as mango Napoleon and various fruit mousses, such as apple and lemon.
The day after Favagnana came two calls on Malta: Gozo and Valletta. From Gozo, the ship's tenders took us to the romantic-sounding Blue Lagoon, where we could swim and sunbathe. After clambering over a lava field, we reached the small beach, then realized that we should have brought cash to rent chairs and an umbrella. However, we were intrigued by a tunnel in the lava rock, through which we could swim to the open ocean. Where, we discovered, jellyfish waited.
Arriving to the capital, we glided into the quintessentially picturesque Great Harbor. Once off the ship, we hiked up into the walled city, where the architectural keynote was iron-clad balconies affixed to masonry structures. Reeking with history, this World Heritage City -- founded, in its current incarnation, in the 16th century by Jean Parisot de la Volette of the Knights of St. John -- is rich in squares, courtyards, gardens and cafes.
Next came Siracusa, filled with Greek and Roman antiquities -- sometimes just fenced-off piles of rubble with no explanation beyond "archeological site." But a comprehensible Temple of Zeus stands right on the edge of the market in the old section of town. In a park north of the port are a largely intact Roman amphitheater and Greek theater.
Subsequent calls were at Panarea, the smallest of the Iolian Islands, and Ventotene, near the Italian mainland. "It gives a very Greek impression," Dominique said of Panarea, "but it is absolutely Italian." We climbed through the steep and winding streets, so narrow that only golf carts could serve as taxis. Leaving in the late afternoon, we slowed and stopped abreast the nearby cone-shaped island of Stromboli, a very active volcano which belched brownish smoke from its crater. A frail white village hunkered obliviously.
The following evening, leaving Ventotene, the breeze freshened, and there was a vitality to the weather and a clarity to the skies. "Perhaps we'll have some pure sailing now," I thought. But the Royal Clipper began to bob like a cork as the vessel motored through genuinely heavy seas. Our group ranged from queasy to ill, as a paradisiacal week turned briefly tumultuous. The next morning, when we all disembarked at Civitavecchia, it was with mixed feelings of short-term relief for the seasick and melancholy in the longer view for all of us, sorry that a special occasion and unique voyage were over.
Karl Zimmermann's last story for Travel was on Isle of Man. He lives in Oradell, N.J.