Sailing the Aegean Sustainably—Just Like the Ancients Did/ Star Clippers

Tall sailing ships seem to turn back the clock, evoking a bygone time when merchants, admirals, and pirates ruled the seas.

Wildly evocative, with billowing white sails overhead and hulls directed toward points unknown, their dynamic form captures not only the wind, but the imagination.

Star Clippers’ four-masted Star Flyer most certainly captured mine.

Founded 30 years ago by Mikael Krafft, Star Clippers is a cruise company specializing in sailing cruises.

With a total of 3 sailboats in its fleet, 2 of which are sisters, you can cruise from the Mediterranean to the exotic Far East and the Caribbean.

You are free to spend your nights and days as you wish in Star Clippers, where you never lose contact with the sea and there are no strict schedules.

While you and your friends sing along to songs around the piano bar, your bartender is preparing to serve you your special drinks at Tropical Bar.

What could be more enjoyable while sailing on the sea?

With Vangelis’s stirring “Conquest of Paradise” piping through the ship’s speakers, starlight piercing the night sky, the unfurling of some 36,000 square feet of sails was inspiring.

It was romantic. It was transporting. But most of all, it was necessary.

You will enjoy many activities on deck, free water sports, yoga and meditation classes, and various entertainment activities.

You can do water sports for every taste during the cruise, such as canoeing, boating, water skiing or windsurfing, at the swimming points offered by the sports team.

If you wish, you can start the day with warm French-style croissants and coffee, or with a crispy cooked bacon, grilled sausage and omelet; If you are on the ship at noon, you can continue with seafood salads and grills.

If your program includes a break on one of the islands, you can also enjoy a delicious barbecue on the shore.

In the evening, our main restaurant with its elegant decoration will be waiting for you with quality wines accompanying the chef’s delicious dishes that appeal to the eye and palate.

Close your eyes and imagine sunbathing on a white sandy beach in the Caribbean.

Clear waters invite you to explore the coral reefs and the lively underwater world of colorful tropical fish.

Star Clippers provides snorkels to all passengers on board. All you have to do is dive and explore.

I thought back to the way goods and people used to travel: by sea and by sail. Indeed, sometimes, when it comes to sustainability, what’s old is new again.

Nearly a third of the world’s cruise ships carrying over four million passengers called on the Greek islands last year—and that’s just a fraction of the more than 30 million cruise passengers that sail the seven seas annually. But the cruise industry comes with a dirty underbelly, tied to rampant waste production, port overtourism, and carbon emissions generated by the heavy fuel oil (HFO), or bunker fuel, that cruise ships primarily use.

Like the ship itself, the elegant staterooms aboard Star Clippers’ Star Flyer evoke a bygone era

Today, the maritime industry—including cruise and cargo ships—is behind nearly 3% of annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Yet heightening environmental maritime regulations and cruise line commitments to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 have pushed the industry to explore and develop decarbonization technologies like battery and hydrogen electric, as well as the millennia-old, cost-effective, and ready-right-now technology of sails and wind power—an approach that, in turn, is powering a small but growing segment of the cruise industry.

 “We can sail under wind power up to 80% of the time on any given itinerary, so from a sustainability perspective this significantly reduces the amount of time we need to use the engine and burn fuel,” explains Terri Haas, VP of Sales and Marketing for Star Clippers North America. Beyond the sails, says Haas, Star Clippers’ smaller-capacity ships translate to other notable sustainability pluses, too, like minimized waste production and “less overtourism, which is important to maintaining the integrity of the small ports our ships visit.”

Monaco-based Star Clippers is one of a handful of established tall sailing ship companies—along with players like Island Windjammers and Sea Cloud Cruises—that are leaning into the sustainability of these sailing ships, adding it to their longstanding lures of adventure and romance.

A fresh crop of next-generation, sail-equipped ships is now also in the pipeline from cruise lines like Orient Express, Hurtigruten, and Ponant.

Realistically, experts like Jacobson see such hybrid models as the most practical application for wind power on ships, with wind ideally supporting emergent, clean-energy battery- and hydrogen-based technologies.

For a more fully wind-powered vacation, Captain Basisca tells me to consider sailing the Caribbean next, with its more reliable trade winds. But he notes that climate change has made tracking the wind anywhere more challenging. “In the past, it was easier to predict the wind and weather. Now everything has really changed,” he says.

If I listen closely to the whispers of the Anemoi, I hear it: We as travelers need to embrace the winds of change in how we travel, too.