Sea Cloud
Sailing Through History

(Yachting) As the historic 110-meter square-rigged tall ship Sea Cloud powers forward under full sail in the Mediterranean Sea between Palermo and Cagliari, I scale higher and higher up the flat-runged rigging, trying to avoid looking down. Is it swaying slightly, or am I imagining it? Right below me is a professional rigger ready to intervene if I need a helping hand. Still, it’s impossible to ignore the twisting knots in my stomach. Up here, I can’t take one hand off the rigging to wipe down my sweaty palms. My mind starts to wander. I’m fitted with a safety harness, but am questioning whether I should have worn deck shoes.

Each step up makes me increasingly nervous. Reaching a steel platform at a height of 14m, I pause briefly to gather my courage. With words of encouragement from the rigger, I scramble over the platform and start to descend on the other side. Triumphant, I set foot again on the teak deck.

That’s only a tiny taste of the tight choreography that the Sea Cloud’s 18 professional rigging crew members, like Emilie and Camilla, need to perform daily. Like acrobats, they scale the rigging vertically, then horizontally, and slowly unfurl the sails by hand. When all 29 sails are up, covering around 3,000 square meters, the ship is a glorious sight to behold. With the engines switched off, all you hear is the sound of waves lapping against the hull.

Navy-trained Emilie, who hails from Denmark, is on her second contract with Sea Cloud. “I really like how it moves through the wind. You can feel each movement of the ship,” she says. “I also really enjoy the physical work.”

Heights have never been my strong suit. Mountain climbing doesn’t interest me but put me on a boat, or anything that floats, and I feel at home. I’m convinced this feeling springs from my ancestral roots. My family comes from the small, remote island of Agios Efstratios in Greece’s Northeastern Aegean. In 2017, I earned my sailing permit and haven’t stopped sailing since. From regatta racing on performance yachts in the Mediterranean and Caribbean to cruising on a catamaran in Seychelles, being on a boat feels like my natural state of being.

A Grand Affair with the Wind

When the opportunity arose to step aboard Sea Cloud, a windjammer with an intriguing history, I couldn’t refuse. Wall Street broker Edward Francis Hutton and his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the General Foods group, commissioned what was, at the time, the world’s largest private sailing yacht. Built in 1931 in Kiel, this magnificent four-masted barque was initially named Hussar V. Post oversaw the interior design, lavishing the ship’s six luxurious suites with French antiques, swan-shaped gold taps, and graceful bedside tables. Today, from the stately pinewood lounge replete with chandelier and a Carrara marble fireplace, intricate, hand-carved wooden balustrades lead below deck to the VIP quarters. Post’s vast, fairytale-like, all-white Louis XVI-style suite has been meticulously preserved. Next door, Hutton’s dark pinewood quarters, featuring a deep red bedspread, look more like an opulent lakeside cabin.

Together, the couple, with daughter Nedenia, embarked on voyages to far-flung destinations like the Galapagos. But their idyllic marriage fizzled fast, due to Hutton’s infidelity. The pair divorced in 1935 and Post remarried, this time to lawyer Joseph E. Davies. She kept the yacht, renaming it Sea Cloud. In World War II, the ship served as a floating weather station for the US Coast Guard, chartered for the sum of one dollar. The hull was painted gray, and the masts, golden eagle figurehead, and bowsprit were removed. After the war, the pair recovered the ship and restored it. However, when their marriage also ran onto the rocks, Post was forced to sell her beloved Sea Cloud. The yacht passed through various hands, including a Dominican dictator and his playboy son, until it was left languishing for years in Panama.

A Sailor’s Ship

German captain Hartmut Paschburg discovered the ship and, together with a group of Hamburg investors, acquired it and spent months making it seaworthy enough to cross the Atlantic. In 1978, Sea Cloud reached Hamburg. Returning to its birthplace, Kiel, the vessel was restored to its former glory and set sail, this time as a cruise ship.

Ever since, the Sea Cloud has plied the waters of the Mediterranean and Caribbean and further afield, attracting an eclectic clientele, and hosting 64 guests in 32 cabins. Many have returned time and again to nestle inside her vast, stark white hull, some preferring the tight quarters of officer cabins. Some, like Martha Pohl and her husband Werner Scholz who have sailed on Sea Cloud eleven times, are maritime history buffs. Many are lifelong sailors. What is for certain is that Sea Cloud is a sailor’s ship.

Chatting with Juergen Schroeder, 89, in the atmospheric dark oak-paneled dining room, he tells me that, following his retirement, he has clocked up some 50,000 nautical miles in the Mediterranean and Black Seas with his 43-foot sailboat. “The Aegean is my favorite sailing area because there are many islands with so much culture and history,” he says. Two decades earlier, he holidayed in Sea Cloud with his wife, whom he lost recently; he has now returned “for one last sail.” Despite mobility difficulties, Schroeder, donning a navy Greek fisherman’s cap, navigates the near-vertical companionway ladder connecting decks with his walking stick without a hitch. “There are not many sailboats like this anymore. I wanted to see the sail-setting. These guys [the crew] are very fast,” he says.

It is Greg Stach and his wife Josselyn Robertson’s first time on Sea Cloud. Based in San Rafael, California, they are members of the St Francis Yacht Club. “She’s a very successful yacht racer in San Francisco’s Bay Area,” says Stach of his wife. They were drawn to Sea Cloud for its old-world aesthetics. “This is a real ship. This is something that actually existed. It wasn’t built to make money. As owners of a wooden boat, we look around and really appreciate the woodwork … This was made by hand by someone who cared and was proud of what they did,” says Stach. The hands-on experience is what many enjoy, from clambering out onto the bowsprit while the ship is under sail, from where you can admire the billowing canvas, to hauling in the heavy Dacron sails.

Lifelong Ties

It’s not just the guests who share a special bond with the ship; some crew members have worked aboard Sea Cloud for decades. Roger Roldan has served as maitre d’ for 39 years, while barkeeper Avelino Saltarin has worked on the ship for 42 years. “We’re really antique,” says Roldan, breaking into an infectious laugh, “but we enjoy it very much.” What keeps him motivated is the opportunity to get to know people from around the world. Roldan singles out the Caribbean as his favorite destination, particularly Antigua and Saint Lucia. “When we set the sails there, we always have the trade winds, so that means plenty of sailing,” he says. Asked what the ship means to him, Roldan says: “For me, Sea Cloud is my home. Every time I go home to Manila, I always think about Sea Cloud … so my spirit is always here.” 2025 marks his final contract with the ship. “I don’t know what I will do when I stop working,” he says.

Captain Pavel Starostin might be a more recent arrival, but he, too, has developed a strong bond with Sea Cloud. He started by sailing on cargo ships, container vessels, and scientific research vessels until he boarded the full-rigged sailing training ship Pallada, skippered by a legendary Russian captain. “After that, I decided to stick with sails,” he tells Maison Ë.

Asked what he loves most about sailing, Starostin says: “It’s interesting to play with the wind, to maneuver the ship with the wind only using the sails.” “I love the old-fashioned German tall ships … Germans know how to build a tall ship the proper way, and if a German tall ship is designed for sailing, she will sail for 100 years.”

Starostin says he believes Sea Cloud will sail easily into its centenary. “She’s in good shape. She sails in 15 knots of wind with a full set of sails and she’s running at five or six knots,” he says. Queried about his biggest challenge, the captain notes he never feared climbing the mast as a sailor. “When you’re responsible for people and watching them climb every day, it’s a completely different feeling,” says Starostin, who seems to be everywhere at once, keeping an eagle eye out for his crew. Docking, too, can be stressful, he admits, because the ship doesn’t have bow thrusters. Instead, tugs are needed to help maneuver Sea Cloud into position at each port.

What’s particularly impressive about the ship, which reaches a maximum speed of 14 knots, is how smoothly it sails. Lacking stabilizers, water and fuel ballasts are used to help keep Sea Cloud on an even keel. “The way she was designed, with the sharp shapes of a sailing yacht, she’s the best tall ship I’ve sailed on, in terms of stability,” says Starostin.

A New Chapter

Later this year, the elegant vessel enters a new chapter. Sea Cloud will go into dry dock in October for a major refit to restore its original character as a private yacht. Cabins added in the ‘70s will be removed and guest capacity will be reduced by about half, making it more exclusive. The ship will primarily be available for private charter, tentatively as of 2027. What is for certain is that the irrepressible Sea Cloud has a heart and soul and will return to the high seas better than ever.