Excelsior Trust is excited to offer some adventurous trips for both adults and young people this season.
If you haven’t sailed with ‘Excelsior’ before, and you love boats, you should definitely give it a try. The rigging and the way she’s sailed is still authentic to when she was first built, so it’s a very special heritage experience. Everyone on board is involved as crew – you’re divided into your watch teams and take your 4 hours on/8 hours off shifts, as well as taking in turns to cook for everyone else. It’s a very intense team-building experience and adults and young people alike get a lot out of it emotionally. The crew are really fun, and the boat is difficult to sail, which is a very satisfying challenge. We’re also becoming more ambitious with our sailing itinerary and last year went all the way up to the Faroe Islands, then to the Baltic via Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The interest and participation of people like you is how we can make these seasons possible.
Ostend voor Anker maritime festival: 21-26 May
The organisers of this festival really treasure ‘Excelsior’ and were very excited when I told them we wanted to come back. Ostend is a really welcoming small port and I hear the festival has everything – local food, drink, sea shanties, maritime activities. There’ll be parties and many other boats to see. We’ll do two 24-hour North Sea crossings to get there and back, which is a really lovely adventure to sandwich the event.
8-14 September: Limfjorden Rundt, Denmark
This is a Danish regatta series for historic wooden boats, with a new port (and party) every night. You get about 60 Scandinavian ex-working boats taking part and it’s spectacular (as well as extremely challenging for the helm with all those boats in tight spaces). Excelsior’s crew are really excited for this one as we joined some years ago and the event is still legendary. The best thing about the Limfjord is that as well as being beautiful, it’s not tidal and it’s sheltered from the North Sea so the water is relatively flat.
15-26 September: Navigation and Seamanship North Sea Adventure
Come and help ‘Excelsior’ get back to Lowestoft from Denmark. Everyone on board is going to get the opportunity to take a bit more of a leadership role in this one and have hands-on training in planning and executing the voyage. Sailing an historic ship comes with a very different set of challenges to sailing a smaller or more modern boat. This expedition will train you to think differently about a sea crossing. If you come on the Limfjorden Rundt trip the week before, you can get a nice hefty discount on this trip (get in touch to discuss).
We still have a few places left for the Tall Ships Races, but they’re selling out fast so get in touch asap if you know someone aged 15-25 who would like to come! Bursaries may be available. It’s also possible to hire the whole boat for a day or longer, and we have public day sails out of Lowestoft available as well, and an Easter weekend trip out of Ipswich.
If you’re interested, subscribe to our mailing list. We promise to keep newsletters to a minimum to protect your inbox! For any booking information, call Francesca on +44 7821 281950 or email her.