ROYAL CLIPPER: THE BIGGEST OF CLASSIC SAILING BOATS

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As usual, it’s very difficult to establish what is the most beautiful and biggest boat in the world.

Some weeks ago, we told you about the biggest sailing ship never built in Italy: there is no doubt, she’s Perini Sybaris, with a length of 70 metres, a displacement of 850 tons and a maximum draught of 11.74 metres.

But, at the moment, the biggest sailing boat in the world is another Perini built in Tuzla (Turkey), called Maltese Falcon: this 88-metre-boat is owned by  Elena Ambrosiadou and she is provided with three rotating masts, 15 rollable sails and a total surface of 2400 metres managed by 15 sailors. Actually, also EOS, built by Lurssen and owned by the American billionaire Barry Diller, provided with a Bermudian schooner and 93 metres long, shares the first place of the chart.

Without forgetting the project of Dream Symphony by Ken Freivokh and Dykstra Naval Architects (the same designers of Maltese Falcon) : it will be 141 metres long and 18 metres wide. Made of wood, it will have four masts and a total sail area of 5000 square metres.

Then, there is Aquijo, the biggest of “normal boats”. She is a modern ketch with two masts (70 m) designed by Vitters, Oceanco and Bill Tripp. Aquijo is 85.9 metres long and 14.48 metres wide. And what about A, owned by Igorevich Melnichenko, probably not a real sailing boat but certainly very long (142 m) and, maybe, very ugly…

But if you prefer traditional sailing boats, the biggest one is Royal Clipper, in the pictures below. She’s very classic, with 5 masts and 45 sails. She’s 134 metres long and she is inspired by the legendary German Preussen.

She is used by Star Clippers Company as a cruise ship and she can host up to 227 guests and 106 crew members. However, she is destined to be overthrown by a new sailing ship with a lenght of 162 metres, a beam of 18.5 metres, 5 masts and a sail area of over 6000 square metres. A copy of “France II”, built in 1911.

La                        Preussen (1902), on which Royal Clipper’s design is based on