Sail with New Freebooters

All of the above, actually – and also a superb French magazine devoted to maritime history. Based in Brittany, of course, and the site also sells books and nauticalia. The French word chasse means hunt or chase. Marée originally referred to the tide, but took on metaphorical meanings connected with an activity that was tightly [...]

UK newspapers have been publishing a steady stream of reports of the nonsensical consequences of Health & Safety regulations and the way they are interpreted, but this is just one facet of a worldwide trend towards regulation and micro-management. Mainland Europe is suffering, too – and it is affecting the operation of tall ships and [...]

I taught myself to scull when I was nine or ten years old. The only trouble was, I did it the wrong way. I put my oar in the sculling notch in the dinghy’s transom and held it like a rudder, with the blade vertical. From that starting position, it was easy to see which [...]

After 5 months in La Seyne sur Mer for her winter overhaul, Belém will set sail from Toulon on April 10th, on the first voyage of her summer season . For nearly two months, this tall ship will be taking trainees for a series of short trips along France’s Mediterranean coast between Toulon, Sète and [...]

A lot of the current Vendée Globe’s competitors have hit submerged objects, and in quite a few cases the collision has caused enough damage to force them to retire – thousands of miles later, if not immediately. Sometimes these objects were inanimate and probably man-made, but quite a few seem to have been large marine [...]