The World’s Largest Sailing Ship Finally Has a Buyer

Golden Horizon is a five-masted square-rigged sailing ship of 8,770 tons, built to carry 300 guests, and for most of the last five years it has been tied up in Croatia doing nothing at all. Brodosplit, the Split shipyard that built it, has now reportedly agreed to sell the vessel for 110 million euros. The buyer is described as a Swiss company operating around a hundred ships, and has not been named because of contractual obligations – which is an unusual amount of discretion for a ship this conspicuous.

The vessel’s history explains the layup. It was ordered by Star Clippers as the Flying Clipper, intended as the flagship of a small fleet of genuine sailing cruise ships, and was never delivered – a dispute between yard and owner left the finished hull without a home. Renamed Golden Horizon, it went briefly into service for the British startup Tradewind Voyages, which folded, and then back to the quayside. A newly built ship that has never had a settled operator is a rare and awkward asset, and rarer still at this size.

Sailing cruise ships occupy a small but durable niche. They carry a few hundred passengers rather than a few thousand, reach harbours the large ships cannot enter, and sell an experience that is closer to yachting than to resort holidaying – which is why the handful of operators in the segment tend to have loyal repeat customers and limited capacity. Golden Horizon is the largest square-rigger afloat, which makes it both the most desirable and the most expensive ship in that category to run.

What happens next is the interesting question, and it has not been answered. A buyer operating a hundred ships is not obviously a cruise line, and a vessel of this configuration is not easily repurposed into anything else. The sale at least ends the possibility that had been discussed most often in the industry, which was that a ship built for sail would be broken up or converted without ever finding a route. For anyone who has wanted to book it, the honest answer is to wait for an operator to be announced.

Sources: Cruise Industry News, CruiseMapper