land sailing yacht facts

Land Yachting – Sailing for Those who prefer land

September 30, 2019 Rob Sayers Experience Days , Extreme Outdoor Activities , Fun Outdoor Activities , Land Activities , Outdoor Sports , Physical Challenges 0

Blasting down the beach with your backside inches above the ground makes land yachting one of the most exhilarating sports I have tried. Powered purely by the wind in my sails, I joined a posse of stockbrokers who were intent on fulfilling their need for speed.

I tried land yachting as an outdoor activity gift from my wife through Red Letter Days . Activity gifts are one of the best ways to guarantee successful gift giving, at least for me.

What is Land Yachting?

The land yacht had three wheels for stability. In case you didn’t realise, it can be quite a challenge to get a four wheeled vehicle to have all four wheels evenly on the ground unless you put in some decent suspension. Land yachts don’t have suspension, and so you feel all of the bumps and bounces. Traction is provided through wind blowing in a large triangular sail attached to a mast mounted at the front of the land yacht. You sit in a very reclined position and hold onto a rope that pulls the sail in or releases it.

Do I need to be able to Sail to Control a Land Yacht?

Sailing a land yacht is far simpler than sailing a boat. There is no risk of waves, capsizing or falling overboard. Also, because you are lying down in the land yacht, there is no risk of being hit by the sail boom when you tack across the wind.

Your instructor will tell you the circuit for the day in relation to the wind and the technique for getting around corners to keep the wind. All you have to do is pull the sail rope and steer to avoid any of the other land yachts, dogs, people on the beach.

How to Control a Land Yacht

You steer a land yacht with two pedals, left and right. Some land yachts have hand levers for steering, but that only leaves one hand free for pulling the sail rope.

If you are facing the right way, all you need to do to get the land yacht moving is to pull the sail rope tight and keep it held tight. You musn’t loop the rope around your hands though, because if the rope pulls too much you could get rope burns or cuts. Land yacht racers usually wear gloves to protect their hands.

The tighter you pull the sail rope, the faster the land yacht will go, as long as you are not heading directly into the wind. As with any sailing sport, you have to work out which direction the wind is blowing to get the most speed. If you get it right, you find yourself hurtling down the beach with a rather huge grins on your face. Tight turns can lead to flying along on only two wheels, which is a bit hairy but awesome fun.

The Thrill of Land Yachting at High Speed

My Land Yachting Gift Experience

Whenever I get a gift experience I always open it with a sense of trepidation, wondering what experience I will be getting myself into. The Tiger Moth flight was a bit scary, mostly because people kept telling me that they had had dreams of me crashing and also because you didn’t get parachutes.

I was very excited when I opened the Red Letter Days envelope with a gift voucher for land yachting. It was something I had wanted to try for quite a while. I booked the two hour session on a beach near Rye in Kent and eagerly awaited that windy day.

It was easy to find, not least becuase of the big van plastered with signs for the land yachting company. The guys running the day were busy setting up the land yachts, which were left lying on their sides so that the wind didn’t blow them down the beach before time. There were quite a few rather nice cars parked at the side of the road, and talking to the other peope waiting most of them were stockbrokers. Land yachting must be one of those sports that attract people who have a need for that adrenalin rush. Engineering doesn’t necessarily give you such a buzz, but using some of the things you design certainly does.

We were given a brief training session on safety and how to control the land yacht. Then it was pretty much in you get and of you go. At first, it was a bit tricky getting around the first corner because you had to cross the head wind. If you didn’t turn quickly enough, you slowed down and stopped facing the wind. No amount of tugging on that sail rope would get you moving. the instructors stood on that corner to help get you moving again. After a few laps, I got the hang of it. At this point the instructors called me over to the centre to stop. I wondered what was up, and then they increased the height of the mast, which in turn unfurled more sail. This meant more speed! Awesome!

I was back out into the circuit and amazed by the increase of speed from increasing the sail size. One by one, the other bankers were pulled over to have a mast extension. Things then became quite competitive. Overtaking and racing ensued. I got such a thrill from overtaking others and a great sense of satisfaction if one of them lost the wind on a corner.

All in all, the two hours whizzed by and I was left wanting more.

How can I get to try Land Yachting?

You do need a licence to sail a land yacht on a public beach in the UK. The best way is to find a land yacht racing club.

If you want to buy your own land yacht, Blokarts are the most popular brand. The Potty is a UK land yacht design that will fit into the boot of your car.

If you want to try land yachting, you can buy land yachting gift vouchers from Red Letter Days. .

Recommended Reading

Privacy overview.

Physics of Land Yacht Sailing

The physics of land yacht sailing – surreal “boats-on-wheels” in the nevada desert.

(CNN) — Over 300 miles from the nearest ocean, competitors in one of the world’s fastest sailing races are battling against a moody wind. A small army of boats — if you can call them that — carve across the Nevada desert. A stream of sand billows behind, caking each competitor’s face in fine, white grit. “It’s like Mother Nature has her foot on the throttle,” says Russ Foster, who has been racing these peculiar yachts-on-wheels since the 1970s. “The speeds that you go at — sometimes 100 miles per hour — means that you really need to stay on top of it or you could have a major accident,” he tells CNN’s Mainsail show. “But that’s part of the challenge.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/19/sport/surreal-boats-on-wheels-race/

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25 Interesting Facts About Sailing You Probably Don't Know

Sailing is a very popular sport, and it has had a large influence on modern life. I've came across lots of interesting facts about sailing, and list them here.

With such a rich history there are many interesting stories to tell. It has shaped our language and the way we see the world today. Our society and free trade is built on the tradition of sailing.

So in this post I've listed all sorts of interesting sailing facts that I came across while researching the articles on this website. Most of them are beyond the obvious. Surely, the trade winds are named after the trade they facilitate? No, it's actually the other way around.

On this page:

1. sailboats are slow (but efficient), 2. trade is named after the trade winds, not the other way around, 3. sailing gives you access to places that are off-limits to tourists, 4. the ideal wind speed for sailing is between 8-12 knots, 5. historical sailboats are often misrepresented, 6. you can operate a 100' sailboat alone, 7. the youngest person to circumnavigate the world was 16-year old laura dekker, 8. feeling blue is originally a sailing term, 9. one of the best laser radial sailors is from the netherlands, 10. sailing has been a part of the olympics from 1896 onwards, 11. 'sonofagun' actually refers to your birthplace, 12. the average salinity of oceans is 3.5% - but it varies greatly, 13. the world-record sailing speed is 65.45 knots (75 mph), 14. you can sail for nearly 22,229 miles in a straight line, 15. the first person to circumnavigate the world alone was joshua slocum (1898), 16. the new york yacht club has one of the longest winning streaks in sports history, 17. the largest sailing yacht in the world is nearly 470' or 143 m long - or not, 18. sailing around the world westward is more difficult than eastward, 19. 'he's a loose cannon' ..., 20. the most popular sail rig is based off a moorish lateen rig, 21. the only 5-masted tall ship sunk because of its speed, 22. the smallest boat to sail around the world was 21 feet, 23. sailboats can sail faster than the speed of the wind, 24. the sailing flags originate from the dutch war efforts against the british, 25. the mightiest pirate was a female chinese prostitute.

The average sailboat cruises at about 4-6 knots, (4-7 mph or 7-11 km/h) and has a top speed of 9 knots (10 mph or 17 km/h). It's just not that fast. That isn't to say there aren't any quick boats: they can be incredibly fast. Especially the multihulls, which have to displace a lot less water. They can go up to 50 knots (almost 60 mph or 93 km/h).

Most sailboats are slow is because they are small (under 20') - and the hull speed is directly related to the length of the boat. Longer sailboats are faster.

So how is a sailboat able to go around the world in under 75 days? Well, they go on all day and night. Also, traveling on water allows you to go in straight lines more often than on land.

Want to know how far a sailboat can sail in a day ? Check out my other article on the average sailing distance in different conditions (new tab).

Our ancestors found that the Atlantic had very reliable wind roads. These roads were called trade winds, trade being the Middle English word for 'track' or 'path'. The trade winds were so important for the English fleet and economy that the name 'trade' became generally accepted to mean (foreign) commerce'.

If you want to learn how the trade winds work , I recommend to read my post on the Atlantic Crossing .

Did you know that there are a lot of small island that are off-limits to tourists? Some of these islands are real hidden gems, with exotic species, wonderful landscape, and authentic villages. There are no flights or cruises going there - but you can get there by boat.

It can be quite the experience to sign in to the island in a 40-year old ledger, with under 200 names in there.

The easiest wind to maneuver small and mid-sized boats is between 8-12 knots, while still being able to reach good speeds.

Anything between 5-8 knots is ideal for beginners that are trying to learn to sail. Anything under 5 knots gets tediously slow.

If you like to learn more about wind speeds, I really go into detail in my previous post Ideal Wind Speed for Sailing .

When we think of old skool sailboats (of the late Middle Ages for example), we often thing of large galleons and first rates. However, due to a flaw in the design of the hull, the ship builders weren't able to build large ships until the Renaissance.

The extended beams, running across the entire length of the ship, were too weak, so they would rot out. Large experimental ships would find an early sea grave when they split into two and sunk.

So the huge floating multi-level buildings with 100 cannons only started to be made in the Napoleonic era, when they figured out you could use cross beams to reinforce the hull.

People often ask me what the biggest boat is they can operate. You can actually operate a 100' sailboat by yourself - if you rig it the right way.

World-record holder François Gabart operated the 100-foot Trimaran MACIF by himself. However, it's not easy and you have to be experienced and mentally tough. Most sailors seem to stay under 35 foot.

Sailing alone is also called short-handed sailing, and you need a short-hand sailing rig. Typically this means lot's of automated systems, and all the sheets running to your cockpit, allowing you to operate the sails while steering at the same time.

The hardest part of sailing by yourself may actually be the docking. Some marinas even offer a special service to help you with that, lending a helping hand. If you are inclined to sail alone (or don't have any friends), you should definitely consider switching to a marina that provides this service.

Sailing a bigger boat does have its advantages . They are more stable, for example. Find out all about boat size for single sailors in What’s the Largest Boat One Person Can Operate? (new tab)

16-year old Laura Dekker (NED) is the youngest person ever to circumnavigate the world solo, after Jessica Watson (AUS) did it just before her 17th birthday. Dekker was 16 and 123 days.

She almost didn't make it because of interference of the Dutch government, who didn't think it was a good idea for a teenager to sail the world. She proved them wrong in all sorts of ways.

The youngest circumnavigation isn't recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records, because they don't want to encourage 14-year olds to sail around the world alone.

If a ship lost its captain during a voyage, the sailors would sail blue flags, indicating their loss. So if you're feeling blue, you're actually referring to the blue flags that used to sign the ship's crew is in mourning.

Marit Bouwmeester is one of the most successful laser radial sailors in the world. She's a 4-time world champion and 1-time Olympic champion (2011, 2014, 2016, 2017), and came in second in 2010, 2012, 2015. She's recently won the World Cup in Enoshima, Japan.

Why does this matter? Well, she's from my neighborhood, and a friend of mine is one of her BFFs, which is pretty cool.

Sailing has been a part of all modern Olympic games, except for the 1904 Summer Games, which were held in Louisiana.

This makes it one of the longest running Olympic disciplines around. So if people ask you: 'is sailing a sport?', simply answer with: 'the International Olympic Committee has believed it to be, for over 120 years'.

It was a gender-mixed discipline for the most part, until 1988, making it one of the only sports where women and man join in open competition.

Great Britain currently holds the most Olympic medals.

In lesser days, women needed to be smuggled onboard. Then, when the passage took longer than expected, they naturally needed to give birth every now and then. On sea, women typically gave birth between the cannons on the gundeck. If the child wasn't claimed by one of passengers or sailors, it was entered in the ship's log as being the 'sonofagun'.

While 3.5% is the average, some seas are just very, very salty. Saline water - aka saltwater - increases metal and aluminum corrosion, so the saltier the sea, the more maintenance you'll need to do.

The Mediterranean is the saltiest sea on Earth, at roughly 3.8% salinity. The Southern Ocean and the Northern Pacific are among the least saline: 3.4% and 3.3%. The Caribbean are quite saline: between 3.6 - 3.7%.

So better sail to the poles, and stay away from the Mediterranean or Caribbean: your boat will last a lot longer. (I know, it's the worst advice.)

If you want to know more about saltwater sailing , for example how to prepare your boat, I encourage you to check out my post on saltwater boats here (new tab).

Paul Larsen (AUS) is the fastest sailor of all time. He holds the world-record sailing speed for 500 meters (also called outright), and the record for fastest nautical mile.

• Outright: 65.45 knots, which equals 121.1 km/h or 75.2 mph
• Nautical mile: 55.32 knots, which equals 102.45 km/h or 63.66 mph
• Fastest 24-hour: Pascal Bidégorry, 908 nm at 37.84 knots, which equals 70 km/h or 43.55 mph

Ok, it's mostly a theory of amateur cartographer David Cooke, who discovered the Cook Passage in 2015. It's a straight line running around the Earth from Port Renfrew, B.C to Quebec, without ever touching land. While critics claim it's impossible to navigate in a perfect straight line, it doesn't really matter. It's a cool theory, and it's the longest you can (theoretically) sail straight without touching land.

Making the world again a little smaller, Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail around the world by himself in 1898.

It took the world 69 years to catch up: the second attempt was by Sir Francis Chichester in 1967.

Slocum, a Nova-Scotian-born American, wrote a book about his journey in 1900, Sailing Alone Around the World, which became an international best-seller.

If you're interested, you can get his book for free on the Gutenberg project here .

The New York Yacht Club won the America's Cup 25 times for 132 years in a row, from 1851 to 1983. In 1987 challenger Royal Perth Yacht Club ended the streak. Since then, the NYYC hasn't won the cup a single time.

World Cup wins:

• United States New York Yacht Club: 25
• New Zealand Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron: 3
• United States San Diego Yacht Club: 3
• Switzerland Société Nautique de Genève: 2
• United States Golden Gate Yacht Club: 2
• Australia Royal Perth Yacht Club: 1

It's called Sailing Yacht A. BUT: it's actually classified as a sail-assisted motor yacht. It has however three huge Bermuda-rigged masts.

Some say Yacht A isn't technically speaking a sailing yacht. I agree. The second largest yacht is actually the longest REAL sailing yacht. Meet the Black Pearl . She truly is a great yacht, designed to cross oceans under just sail power. At 348' (106 m) it's gigantic, and it's one of the most advanced yachts in the world.

It's made in the Netherlands (I'm secretly promoting the Netherlands here), at the Oceanco shipyard.

So which of these, do you reckon, is the largest?

Most word-record contenders choose to sail eastward, thanks to the stronger and more predictable winds and currents eastward on the southern hemisphere. There are just 5 world records using the westward route, and since 2010 no one set a record by taking a right turn.

In comparison, more than 20 records have been set taking the eastward route.

• The fastest eastward circumnavigation: 40 days and 23 hours
• The fastest westaward circumnavigation: 122 days and 14 hours

However, most recreational skippers tend to sail westward on the trade winds, because they prefer the tropical seas.

Most people need around 3.5 years to sail around the world . Learn more on the routes and different paces in my article How Long Does it Take to Sail Around the World? (new tab)

... is originally a sailing term. The cannons on a ship could weigh up to 3,400 pounds (or 1,500 kg). You can imagine that a loose one could do quite the damage. So loose cannons are dangerous - and should be avoided at all cost. Hence the saying.

The Bermuda sloop is a fore-and-aft single-masted sailboat rig that was developed in the 17th century by a Dutch-born Bermudian. It was inspired by the Moorish lateen rig. They got to know this rig in the Spanish-Dutch independence war, where the Spanish used the boats.

It replaced the gaff rig thanks to it's superior maneuverability.

Want to know everything about sail types and rigs? I've written a killer guide on it, explaining precisely what kind of sail you're dealing with, and what it's used for. I think it's a great post, one of the best on this blog actually. Read it here (new tab).

In 1902, the first ever full-rigged five master was built: the Preußen. It was the only 5-masted full-rigged ship ever built, until the Swedish sail cruise liner Royal Clipper was launched in 2000.

(To be clear: there were other five masters, but none of them was a tall ship.)

It sailed between Germany and Chile and was capable of transporting large amounts of goods at high speeds. Its hull length was 433' (132 m). She carried 47 sails (which is a lot).

In 1910, just 8 years after her launch, she sunk in the English Channel due to damage from a collision with a small cross-channel steamer, 'Brighton'. The Brighton underestimated Preußens speed, at 16 knots.

Legend has it the skipper said: "a sailboat can't go that fast" - after which the two collided.

She's an impressive sight:

Alessandro Di Benedetto, who is also called the Crazy Italian, has a special world record on his name. He circumnavigated the world in the smallest sailboat: a 21' (6.5 m). It took him 268 days and 19 hours, which is not very fast.

But it's an impressive accomplishment, especially seen the fact that he's been dismasted around Cape Horn. To deal with his dismating, he made a junk rig that got him all the way back to France, finishing his world-record attempt successfully.

Most boats can't go faster than the speed of the wind. But some racing yachts and most multihulls can. The reason is two-fold.

The reason it's possible is that boats generate their own wind, allowing them to 'surf their own wave' so to speak, increasing their speed.

Secondly, keelboats have a displacement hull: they push the water forward, which means they have to deal with resistance, and this resistance increases when the speed increases.

But this isn't a problem with the rise of multihulls. Multihulls use flat beds instead of a keel, which means the hulls are floating on top of the water surface. This allows them to go much faster, since they don't have to deal with water resistance.

Want to know how to calculate the hull speed of any boat ? If you're like me and like to nerd out about these kinds of things, I definitely recommend to go check out my article on the average speed of sailboats (opens in new tab).

During the Anglo-Dutch wars (1652-1674) the British wanted to replace the Dutch as the dominant naval power. The Dutch admiral De Ruyter and Grand Pensionary DeWitt came up with a flag signaling system to outmaneuver the British. It was a success.

To be fair, this is more of fun trivial knowledge, and not so much a sailing fact. Consider it a bonus fact:

Ching Shih (which literally means 'widow of Zheng') was the mightiest pirate that ever lived. She had over 300 junks under her command. The ships were manned by between 20,000 - 40,000 men, women, and children. She fought major naval powers, such as the British Empire, Portuguese, and the Qing dynasty.

She's without doubt the most successful pirate ever. Unlike many others, she wasn't executed, but actually died as a free woman in her own home. Quite the story.

read your 25 facts. excellent, interesting, short to the point, really unknown and enlightning facts that made me curious and search more info. thanks!

Shawn Buckles

Hi Miki, thanks and great to hear you’ve enjoyed the article. You’re welcome!

Wayne Hughes

Hi Miki, Tonight we have our local small sailing club Annual Prizegiving - I am the MC - Sincere Thanks for your research and article as they will give interesting facts to be sprinkled throughout the evening.

Narrabeen Lakes Sailing Club - Sydney, Australia - 115 years old this year

Ray Bradley

Very interesting reading,with some humour thrown in. Thankyou

I JUST WANTED TO SAY I WAS DOING MY HOMEWORK AND I was sooo happy to find out I got good grades thank to this website I give it a 👍🏻

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Land Sailing in Nevada

January – february 2013.

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By MATTHEW B. BROWN

Nevada has many claims to fame, and you can add one more to the list: land sailing. In fact, I was interested to learn recently that the Silver State is arguably the premier land-sailing destination in the United States.

“We have the dry lakebeds, the hard mud,” says nine-time national champion and current treasurer of the North American Land Sailing Association, Mark Harris. “Nevada is a very popular location because we can go the fastest.” Nevada also has wind galore, which is as valuable to a land sailor as fuel is to a racecar driver.

Land sailing, also known as sand yachting or land yachting—or as Harris likes to call it, “dirt boating”—has evolved primarily into a racing sport in the last half century. Its roots can be traced as far back as 6th-century China. Centuries later, some European royalty used land yachts for entertainment, and they were even used hundreds of years ago in the U.S. to transport goods.

Today, however, they are used primarily for competition. Land-sailing events are held internationally from the vast beaches of Western Europe, Ireland, New Zealand, and Brazil to the dry deserts of the U.S. It’s no surprise then that the arid sands of Nevada have become the epicenter of the fiercely competitive dirt-boating world.

OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. “It’s friendly competition,” says Harris, an electrical engineer for the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. “The Europeans are big on entertainment, so that tradition has carried over to the states.” The sense of community and family is strong in land sailing. Harris says a group of spectators and racers, which rarely exceeds 100 at most events, will enjoy potluck dinners, fly remote-control airplanes, hold stargazing parties, and socialize around bonfires.

The next major Nevada event is America’s Landsailing Cup (this and most others are open to the public) on March 23-30 at Ivanpah Dry Lake, just south of Primm—a shopping and entertainment destination known for its Primm Valley Resorts and Desperado roller coaster.

Richard Jenkins set the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle (126.2 mph) there on March 26, 2009 in his yacht Greenbird. The previous record of 116.7 mph was set at Ivanpah in 1999.

While Ivanpah is technically in California just over the Nevada border, it’s still largely considered a Nevada event because Primm is the gateway. Other Silver State terrain used primarily for land sailing includes Misfits Flat, just south of Stagecoach; Smith Creek Valley Dry Lake southwest of Austin via State Route 722; and Diamond Valley northeast of Eureka via S.R. 278.

On the NALSA website there are images from the 1998 “Holy Gale” event held in the Black Rock Desert. The Thrust SuperSonic car (jet-powered in this case) famously bolted across northwestern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert in 1997 at a world-record speed of 763.035 mph, or 2 percent above the speed of sound.

The annual Holy Gale has since moved to Smith Creek Valley, which is Nevada pilot Lester Robertson’s favorite event. Robertson is the owner of the aforementioned Misfits Flat land—where much of the famous 1961 film starring Marilyn Monroe was filmed—and the Carson City company Complete Millwork Service.

Robertson loves the competition of land sailing, but he also cites, “the silence of the desert; just setting down these contraptions, accelerating, and seconds later flying along at 50 mph in a cloud of dust,” he says. “The dust subsides, and you will find yourself five miles from camp without a breath of wind, hoping for the next puff to come in and take you home.”

Robertson, who heavily promotes youth land sailing, also speaks highly of the camaraderie that is such a big part of the sport’s makeup. “A lot of guys and gals have been friends for years—the same bond you find with the rock hunters, rocketeers…all of us waiting for the next year’s trips to the heart of Nevada, the Great Basin.”

Black Rock Goes Soft

The Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada was once a premier land-sailing destination, but that’s not so anymore. The key, believe it or not, is moisture—or lack thereof. “It has not flooded since 2000 or thereabouts,” says Nevada pilot Lester Robertson. “Four years ago the surface went from so hard you did not leave imprints with your motorhome tires to so soft and crumbly a 250-pound dirt boat would sink so deep you cannot sail.”

According to Robertson, the Black Rock needs a substantial flood covering after which the water would soak deep into the subsurface. “Perhaps this will be the year we get the type of snow and rain we had when the Truckee River flooded and the Helms pit became Sparks Marina; that’s what it will take to repair the Black Rock Desert,” he says.

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A complete guide to high latitude sailing (and avoiding icebergs)

• November 10, 2023

Andy Schell shares essential advice for how to tackle a first high latitude sailing adventure

I’ve just returned home from skippering 59º North’s Farr 65 Falken from Annapolis, Maryland, to Isafjordur in north-west Iceland. We covered over 3,000 miles, sailing via the stupendous Prince Christian Sound in southern Greenland. And we did it all in safety and style, managing a tight passage schedule through fog, ice, unpredictable weather and everything else you come to expect when high latitude sailing.

I’m proud of the fact that my first mate and I made it look easy for the paying crew who joined us this summer. In truth, like every big ocean passage, the ‘making-it-look-easy’ part is all down to preparation, the part our guest crew don’t get to see. With the right prep, all that’s left is the execution.

I should start with the disclaimer that I’m no high latitude sailing expert. I’ve made two major voyages further north: this most recent one via the Viking Route in Greenland and Iceland; and in the summer of 2018 my wife, Mia, and I sailed our Swan 48 Isbjørn to 80°N in Spitsbergen, then south to Iceland, also with paying crew. So what follows is my thoughts on high latitude sailing in ‘normal’ conditions – meaning transiting known routes with reasonable chart accuracy and manageable ice conditions (3/10th coverage or less).

I’ll leave the really serious ice navigation discussions to more experienced folks like Skip Novak and Bob Shepton . But this article is aimed at sailors looking to sail a little further afield, rather than planning an extreme expedition.

What I’ve learned from those two voyages, though, is that high latitude sailing isn’t all that different from any major voyage. How you prepare your boat and yourself will remain much the same, save for a few key differences. High latitude sailing can seem intimidating – and, rather like celestial navigation, it’s becoming increasingly popular, though I’m convinced that some folks who teach it unconsciously over-complicate it.

There’s certainly a heightened sense of danger and skill required when you sail up north or far south. The stakes are higher, there’s no denying that — colder water, less predictable weather and being further removed from any assistance or emergency help, should you need it. But if you can safely cross an ocean, you can safely sail to the ends of the earth.

Isbjørn motoring slowly in ice. Photo: 59° North Sailing

High latitude sailing seamanship

Sailing to the far north or far south requires advanced seamanship, as the margins for error are tighter and the consequences of mistakes higher. I like to boil seamanship down to two principles — anticipation and adaptation.

Anticipation leads to proper planning and preparation. Expecting ice and fog? Install a good radar, learn how to use it. Challenging weather conditions likely? Be confident in how to really read and understand weather models ahead of time.

Anticipation, in other words, can be learned. You can study weather models, attend a radar course, speak to folks who’ve gone before, read all the books etc. High latitudes sailing is not the place to wing it or figure it out as you go. The Captain Ron school of seamanship, “if anything’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there!” – well, I think that’s foolhardy.

Our finest example of anticipatory seamanship came on landfall at the small village of Nanortalik in south-west Greenland in heavy fog and surrounded by icebergs. Two days prior we spent 12 hours hove-to in order to let the weather advance such that we’d be properly set up for landfall. The wind had gone on the nose and was heading us, forcing our course more to the east.

Driving hard downwind in chilly northern waters. Photo: 59° North Sailing

The forecast models suggested the wind would soon back and increase, with 25 knot north-westerlies just as we’d enter the 60-mile wide iceberg belt. Had we continued sailing close-hauled, we’d have not only arrived at the ice limit in the dark, but we’d also have had a much tighter angle on the wind, limiting our manoeuvrability under sail in limited visibility and with lots of ice around. By waiting, we allowed the wind to back while we sat hove-to, enabling us to sail a higher course once we got underway and position the boat to windward of our landfall waypoint.

We made the final approach broad-reaching, in daylight. The fog was thick and we navigated around icebergs on the radar, deeply reefed, but being in that windward position and in daylight made the difference between a tense but manageable landfall and a potentially dangerous one. Anticipation paid off.

No matter how well you anticipate, however, you’ll encounter surprises here and there. Adaptation requires flexibility in the moment, during the execution stage. As weather and conditions change much more rapidly in higher latitudes, adaptation becomes a more valuable skill.

On our 2018 passage north to Spitsbergen on Isbjørn we’d found what appeared to be a snug anchorage on the chart in Hornsund, the southernmost (and arguably most spectacular) fjord system on Spitsbergen’s west coast. We dropped the hook to windward of a small sandpit in calm conditions, launched the dinghy and sent a party ashore to get some footage with the drone.

Not long after, a large slab of sea ice broke loose from the shoreline and began drifting down towards Isbjørn’s position. Thanks to the attentiveness of those on anchor watch and the quick action by the crew, we calmly weighed anchor and sought shelter in an adjacent, ice-free harbour a few miles away. Up north you can never fully relax, and must be willing and able to change plans at a moment’s notice.

Drone shot of Isbjørn dwarfed by a megaberg. Photo: 59° North Sailing

Essential gear

First off, anything you’d already have aboard a well-equipped boat heading off on a standard ocean crossing will be needed for a high latitudes passage, so we won’t rehash that here. Instead, we’ll talk about additional pieces of kit that come in especially handy far north or south.

Both Isbjørn and Falken have Eberspächer forced-air type diesel heaters on board and while not absolutely essential (you can always add layers and buy a heavier sleeping bag after all), they really made the difference between enduring and enjoying the passages.

Forced-air systems aren’t as efficient as a radiator setup, but for boats like ours that don’t sail permanently in the high latitudes, they’re a much easier installation and, crucially, they keep the boat dry. Ours have a fan mode so can also circulate air when you don’t need the heat, and when you’re in warmer climates, they don’t take up any space in the accommodation.

The heaters ran not quite continually, but were on anytime it was particularly wet or cold outside, and almost always at night. I compare standing a watch in the high latitudes to sitting on a ski lift for four hours — you’re not moving your body much, so the cold seeps into your bones by the end of a shift.

Time for supper – hot food wherever possible is essential for crew morale and wellbeing. Photo: 59° North Sailing

Coming below decks to a warm, cosy and, most importantly, dry cabin becomes really important: heat below also allows you to change out of your thermals and into shorts and a T-shirt and climb into a dry sleeping bag, which leaves you better rested for the next watch. On Falken , we ducted heat into the wet lockers port and starboard, so the oncoming watch can look forward to warm and dry foulies and boots.

For many people radar would fall into the category of essential gear on any well-equipped offshore vessel, but not all yachts have it – I’ve crossed oceans on several boats that didn’t have radar and we managed just fine without it.

But radar is truly essential anywhere you might encounter ice, so you need a good one and you need to know how to use it.

Both our boats have a Furuno 1835 commercial radar, equipped with full ARPA (Automated Radar Plotting Aid) capability. I prefer this standalone-style radar as opposed to the more common MFD-style, which is normally part of a networked electronics package. It adds a level of redundancy and forces you to really understand how to use radar (as opposed to overlaying onto charts).

An iceberg makes an appearance on radar. Photo: 59° North Sailing

I became really confident in using radar around ice on the Svalbard passage in 2018, so when Falken approached the coast of Greenland in heavy fog, I was less stressed than I might have been.

The larger icebergs showed clearly on the radar screen at six miles range, and while the fog was very thick – we had 100m visibility, max — by slowing down the boat and putting a bow watch at the front, we found it quite easy to spot the dangerous growlers and bergy bits with plenty of time to alter course if needed to avoid them.

The ARPA capability of our 1835 radar made it easy to lock onto a target and track it. Once acquired, the target will show course, speed, CPA (Closest Point of Approach) and TCPA (Time to Closest Point of Approach), much like AIS does.

VHF (with loud hailer)

This one may seem silly, but operating in fog around the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which are heavy with other marine traffic, made it essential for us to have a way to broadcast fog signals. Falken has a loud hailer mounted near the middle spreaders and our ICOM radio can automate fog signals whether we’re anchored, sailing or motoring. It’s amazing how well you can hear fog signals from ships and lighthouses in low visibility, so being able to answer with our own signals offered peace of mind when there was traffic around.

The VHF itself is an essential tool when operating in fog – we’d often simply call an otherwise unidentified radar target or AIS target and have a conversation about each other’s intentions. Don’t be shy of using it.

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Bulletproof ground tackle

The shallowest anchorage we used in Greenland was about 60ft, and all anchorages were covered in kelp forests. Solid, reliable ground tackle is essential on any cruising boat, but there’s a difference between anchoring in sand and 20ft of clear water in the Caribbean and rocky kelp in Greenland in 75ft.

By ‘ground tackle’ I mean the entire system, from anchor to rode to windlass. As much as you want to stay put in those tough conditions, you also need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice if ice intrudes into your anchorage. It happened to us again this past summer, when a big iceberg encroached on Falken at the eastern terminus of the sound, forcing us to re-anchor on the other side of the fjord, then set anchor watches to keep an eye out for more unruly ice.

I’m a fan of the rope/chain rode combo – which I know is blasphemy among most high latitude skippers, but both of our boats use this, with 40m of chain spliced to another 100m of 8-strand plaited polyester rode. Isbjørn has a Rocna 40kg anchor, while Falken carries a 55kg Vulcan, but I’d feel confident with most of the ‘modern’ style anchors. Just find one that fits your bow roller properly.

By using a rope/chain combo, we’re saving a bunch of weight in the bow when sailing, and providing an easier way to bail out in a hurry if we need to buoy the rode and ditch the anchor (say if a boat is dragging down on us, or up north if ice is approaching faster than we can haul the anchor up safely). It’s much easier to cut rope than veer a whole bunch of chain to the bitter end.

Ice poles or ‘tuks’ are essential gear for fending off bergy bits both large and small. Photo: Daniel Hug

You’ll inevitably come across the ‘tuk’ or ice pole – simply a long wooden pole with a spike or screw in the end of it – in your research on high latitude sailing. We had a pair on both Isbjørn and Falken which come in handy, mainly when anchored and pushing away small bergy bits that drift around and past the boat. Small pieces grazing the sides of even a fibreglass boat (which both our boats are) are no cause for concern, but in Greenland on Falken we had a much larger piece, about the length of the boat itself, get alarmingly close to the rudder. With ice of this size, you end up using the tuks to push the boat away from the ice, not vice versa. We also carried a climber’s ice axe on both trips to the ice, though we ended up mainly using it for fun as a way to break chunks of iceberg off for use in our evening rum tot.

Fleece lined fisherman-style rubber gloves are perfect for long stints at the helm – here crew Laura Gale steers Isbjørn in Norway. Photo: 59° North Sailing

Don’t overthink this – if you’ve been skiing you can pack for high latitude sailing. Even in summer the temperatures are cold, and the wind chill is a real issue. A lot of people advocate the one-piece insulated suits, which are ubiquitous among fishermen up north, but I actually prefer to just simply layer with the same foulies I wear on a normal ocean passage, and underneath I bundle up with merino base layers and down midlayers. I wear insulated leather ski gloves on my hands (and keep two pairs, as they’re impossible to keep dry), and Dubarry boots with wool ski socks on my feet. Rubber fisherman-style gloves with fleece liners are perfect for long stints at the helm, but not for handling lines. I’ve never been cold, even in Falken and Isbjørn’s relatively unprotected cockpits, which are big and have only a small companionway dodger for protection.

Non-essential gear

It can be surprising to realise how little you need to sail off the map. About two-thirds of our way through the 70-mile Prince Christian Sound fjord system we encountered another yacht out ahead of us.

As we approached Letitia II, a tiny Contessa 32, we saw it had hanked-on headsails, a windvane on the stern and a little inflatable in tow behind. A young French-Canadian couple were in the cockpit, with their very large golden retriever. They were trying to sail in a dying zephyr while we approached them under power.

Layer up with clothing – you can get cold through inactivity. Photo: 59° North Sailing

John and Sophie, and their dog Nine, have been cruising on a shoestring for three years. They were trying to sail because they wanted to conserve the tiny bit of diesel fuel in their tank for getting into and out of harbours. Their heater below decks was a homemade wood-fired stove, the fuel broken bits of pallet wood they’d scavenged from the small villages dotting the west coast of Greenland. Most of their food was foraged for – and they ate like royalty dining on mussels and fresh herbs, even in barren Greenland.

We took them under tow for the last 20 miles of the fjord (saving them at least two days in the process) and invited them aboard Falken, to ride in the cockpit in the sunshine.

My point is that what matters most is attitude. Bob Shepton, one of the greatest high latitude sailors of recent memory, did it all in a production Westerly 33 with minimal creature comforts, and folks like John and Sophie are following in his wake. So don’t think you need a metal boat and all the latest tech.

Essential knowledge

“The more you know, the less you need.” Yvon Choinard, founder of adventure clothing company Patagonia, was talking about climbing when he wrote that line, but it just as easily applies to sailing, especially in high latitudes.

alken offers a tow to the Contessa 32 Letitia II in the Prince Christian Sound. Photo: 59° North Sailing

Understanding weather forecasting models and their limitations is in my view the single most important piece of knowledge for any offshore passage. This is the most important piece of the anticipation element of good seamanship. If you can anticipate the weather – or, importantly, anticipate the uncertainty of any weather forecast – you will have more successful passages.

To start with, weather in the high latitudes is inherently harder to predict. Weather models rely on data input in order to create a forecast output. In lesser travelled parts of the ocean, less data is available to input and therefore less certainty in the output should be expected.

I prefer the word ‘certainty’ to ‘accuracy’ when it comes to weather forecasting – if you can learn to gauge the certainty of any given weather forecast it will help you make decisions about your own future sailing strategy, whether planning for a departure or working on a weather route in mid-ocean. The less certain a forecast is (and you can interpret certainty by how much different models disagree, and by how much a single model changes from one run to the next), the more conservative your routing decisions ought to be. And vice versa.

Heavy weather tactics

Cold air is denser than warm air, and so 20 knots up north will exert more force on your sails than it would in the tropics. And don’t forget that everything happens slower on deck when you’re covered in layers and wearing gloves.

Having a real heavy weather strategy and understanding how your boat reacts to different techniques like heaving-to or setting a series drogue is essential. The weather changes much faster and more often than it does in temperate latitudes and being able to transition from full sail to storm sails and back again smoothly will make life more enjoyable at sea. Practise different heavy weather techniques before you depart.

Enjoying the unknown

The recent boom of high latitude sailing is about finding new adventures, and really, what’s an adventure without a little bit of the unknown? If you’re tempted, do the research, prep your boat. And go.

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90 facts about sailing

Not always serious, but certainly true facts about yachting from Alexander Babitsky — the founder of the yacht company «Seanation», a sailing instructor and ideologist of the largest Russian-language regatta for beginners — «AFR».

Anastasiia Mosina

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Alexander Babitsky

Anastasiia mosina , alexander babitsky.

1.It is not the wind that is dangerous for yachts, but the waves. A storm of any reasonable strength alone cannot cause any damage to the yacht’s hull. The wind cannot turn the yacht over either. But a wave driven by the wind can wash away all equipment and people from the deck, and in case of an overturn, the yacht can sink. I am talking about cruising yachts and 6-8 meters waves.

2.It is not easy to come across a real storm and, moreover, a hurricane, if you are not looking for it. Many people around the world have been sailing for 20 years and have never come across extreme weather. But if you really want to, then there are places on Earth where a meeting with Poseidon in all his glory is guaranteed.

3.In recent decades, yacht manufacturing has undergone dramatic changes. One after another, shipyards, which for a long time have been producing serious and rather expensive sailboats for round the world trips, multi-day voyages, and so on, go bankrupt. In turn, unprecedented growth is shown by shipyards that manufacture mass-market boats for pleasure yachting. The retail price of yachts is going down, quality is getting worse, quantity is growing. Beneteau, Jeanneau, Bavaria, Hanse, Dufour, Elan, etc are the shipyards producing yachts that no one would have taken seriously 30-40 years ago. Hallberg-Rassy, Najad, Oyster, Westerly, Rival, Sadler, etc are either already bankrupt, or on the verge of bankruptcy. Yachting has changed from a way to travel to a way to race and go out to sea for a casual sailing. This is evolution, and that’s okay.

Yachting is about finding ways to repair your boat in exotic locations.

4.Many people think that there are no really luxurious sailboats — only motorboats. It is not true. Google Perini Navi for example. In general, a very cool sailboat will cost as much as a very cool motorboat. It’s a matter of taste. So, a large sailing yacht doesn’t mean that the owner has not yet saved up for a motorboat.

5. Sailboats will exist until the moment when someone will not invent some other relatively economical way of moving on water without limitation in range. To cross any of the oceans on a motor yacht, you need to have a huge supply of fuel that must be stored somewhere, so this yacht must be of the appropriate size. In yachts it works like this: the length is directly proportional to the cost. Therefore, few can afford a motorboat trip around the world. A sailboat from 6 meters long is already a real ship, on which you can sail in open spaces. But as soon as a conventional nuclear reactor the size of a matchbox appears, yachtsmen will switch to this method of movement, and sailboats will remain for old-schoolers and athletes. This is what happened with photographic film. However, all this is not 100%.

6. Owning a yacht is not expensive. In northern Europe, you can buy a sailboat ready to sail around the world for 10-20 thousand euros. No, it won’t be a piece of shit. But you will need to work on fixing it. And all thoughts and plans will be about it.

7.The British say that yachting is about finding ways to repair a boat in exotic locations. It’s true. Yachts break down all the time. Absolutely horrible operating conditions (shaking, salt, loads, ultraviolet light), an insane amount of spare parts, the crew that doesn’t know what it is doing — all these are the reasons that the owner of a boat is constantly repairing something. Yes, you can buy a yacht for little money, but you have to invest daily. Although, if you have a clever pair of hands, don’t mind being homeless and don’t need any conveniences, then you can do with a minimum of financial investments.

The Mediterranean is a pretty lousy region for sailing yachting. There is almost always too much wind or no wind at all.

8.Sailing is considered an extreme sport. In fact, as long as it is just sport, and not a world-class sport, the chances to become disabled, dye or go missing are quite small. Modern yachts, if a skipper is competent and the yacht is fixed, are quite safe. Everything is the same as with cars.

9.Contrary to popular belief, the Mediterranean is a pretty lousy region for sailing yachting. There is almost always too much wind or no wind at all. For a sailor, the ideal weather is moderately strong and steady wind, like, for example, in the Caribbean.

10.All shipyards film inspiring commercials about how their boat is steadily sailing under a slight comfortable roll, managed by a brutal male, and a female in a dress at the same time drinks cold rose wine and smiles at the sun. In real life, everything is not so. However, if you find a closed bay, in which there is no wave, choose the right weather, do not pour too much wine into a glass, then for about 15 minutes you will be able to bring the commercial to life. But no longer.

11.Sailing athletes differ from cruising yachtsmen as much as Formula 1 riders differ from ordinary drivers. That is, a person who has been racing on the Optimist since the age of 6 needs to learn sailing in long voyages no less, and often more, than those who started cruising straight away, even if not from childhood.

12. Size is not important. And with sailboats too. To sail across the seas and oceans, you do not need a large yacht, but you need a well-prepared one. Any talks about the fact that it is impossible to travel around the world on a 10-meters long yacht are justified by nothing, except cowardice.

13. When you hear from beginner yachtsmen stories about the horrible storm they have been through, perhaps you should doubt their stories. And that’s why:

a) The wind is often gusty. At a linear speed, for example, 10 m / s, gusts can blow even up to 20 m / s. Fear has many eyes, and they will notice that figure on the anemometer, which blinks 1 time for 1 second, and then this figure will appear in their stories.

b) Sailing yachts sail under the so-called apparent wind. This is the wind that you get from adding the natural wind speed and the wind speed generated by the movement of the yacht. That is, if a yacht is sailing using the wind that blows relative to the front, then the apparent wind is stronger than the natural. The devices most often display the speed of the apparent wind. Beginner yachtsmen forget about it and think that the weather is close to stormy, which is not necessary so.

14. The Russian maritime language began and finished its development in tsarist times. Therefore, most of the modern yacht parts have only English names. And the Old Dutch words, such as grottoes and staysails, are slowly but surely leaving the everyday life of modern yachtsmen.

15.The dream of many beginner yachtsmen is to train as a skipper, get a license and start sailing people for money, thereby making a living and traveling at the same time. I also started like that. Now this plan is close to utopia. The number of such skippers is huge, plus there is always the opportunity to go to sea either for free or for little money, helping those who have their own yacht when this yacht needs to be taken somewhere.

16. No, nobody uses astronavigation now. Orientation to celestial bodies has outlived its usefulness. Which, of course, does not prevent you from knowing this method.

17.Although paper charts are still being produced and all sailors are being trained to use them, they will soon become a rudimentary method of navigation. Modern yachtsmen sailing in coastal waters use only electronic navigation. Those who sail far, sometimes check and make charts on paper, but this is more a desire to play it safe than a real need. Another thing is that all electronics must be duplicated, as well as energy sources for it.

Ocean crossings are very, very boring. Fixing the tack every 5 days is often the only thing you need to do. And the remaining 23 hours 59 minutes and 30 seconds you have absolutely nothing to do.

18.Regatta is a sporting competition of sailing yachts held in accordance with the Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS). And not just a bunch of yachts going roughly one way and passing beer from yacht to yacht. But they started to call a regatta any flotilla with more than two yachts, where someone shouted into the radio «let’s race.»

19.The word «yachting» appeared in the Russian language recently in response to the fact that there was nothing but «sailing». And spending time sailing is not always a sport. Most often, if you take the Mediterranean, it is lying on the deck to the cozy rumble of a diesel engine and the cries of seagulls. What kind of sport is it really ...?

20. Any modern cruising sailing yacht has a motor. Before, yachts with sails and a motor were called motor-sailing. Now it became meaningless and they all just became sailing. The motor is used for maneuvering in marinas, sailing in calm weather and charging batteries.

21.Ocean crossings are very, very boring. All the tales about sunrises and sunsets, dolphins and tuna, wind and sails are good for self-sufficient phlegmatic people. Dear dreamers, imagine that nothing other than the above is available for, let’s say, three weeks. Nothing at all. Do you think it’s fun? Not at all. Fixing the tack every 5 days is often the only thing you need to do. And the remaining 23 hours 59 minutes and 30 seconds you have absolutely nothing to do. Sometimes you even want a storm not to be bored. However, if you are in an ocean regatta, and not in a simple crossing, then the situation is completely different.

22.If you decided to become a skipper, it does not matter at all which system the chosen school will have: IYT, RYA or something else. You are taught by the instructor and each of them does it differently. A good instructor plus your ability plus your motivation minus your laziness = success.

23.SHOCK. SENSATION. INTRIGUE. If you decide to buy a yacht for yourself or are planning to sail on a yacht of friends, you don’t need a skipper license AT ALL. At least in most countries. Your certificate of training is only of interest to charter companies and their insurers. Yes, again — on a private yacht in most waters you DO NOT NEED A LICENSE!

24. Sailing is expensive if it’s a sport and not a cruise! The higher the class, the more money you need. Relative exceptions are small sports yachts up to 8-9 meters long. Cruises, on the other hand, are cheap. A 6-8-seater yacht in the off-season, for example, in spring, is quite affordable — about 1000 euros per week. For all 6-8 people.

25. If you do not know anything, and you are invited to participate in the regatta for your money, then this is a fraud. There are no training regattas and training in regatta conditions. Well, they exist, but they will not teach you anything there. You will stay next to one rope and periodically do something with it when the captain asks you about it (usually in a foul language). So you will spend the whole regatta and go home even more confused than you were before. However, here we are talking about regattas, and not about the «regattas» from paragraph 18. You can learn something at them, or you can just have fun.

26. Surprisingly, I have never seen Orthodox icons and crosses near the steering wheel or other equipment. It is scary to imagine how, in bad weather, the skipper, instead of changing sails to stormy ones, falls on his knees and prays.

I personally know several very talented skippers who often say «pull that red rope over there» instead of «pull up the tack»

27. Many yachts have 2 steering wheels not to steer together but because when the yacht heels over, one of the steering wheels turns out to be more convenient for steering. Plus, on wide yachts, 2 steering wheels help you go from board to board without losing control of the yacht.

28. There are no age restrictions for children on yachts. Many families go sailing with babies on board. You just need to comply with simple rules and that’s it.

29.The wish for a fair wind is actually not entirely true in modern conditions. When the wind blows straight from behind, comfort and speed are not great.

30. In the conditions of a modern cruising yacht, about 100 nautical terms are used. Experienced skippers like to reproach the «youth» for ignorance or misuse of certain words. I have never noticed a correlation between knowing the terms and feeling the yacht / wind. I personally know several very talented skippers who often say «pull that red rope over there» instead of «pull up the tack.» This does not stop then from sailing tens of thousands of miles.

31.A modern cruising yacht, especially a charter yacht, is a set of compromises. For each wind direction there should be a sail. And for every wind force too. Charter yachts usually have only two sails, or three at most. So you sail, but by sporting standards, it’s pretty funny. At the same time, racing boats often have 10-12 sails, which are constantly changed due to changing conditions. Naturally, this difference is due to economy.

32. Usually two people, if they are competent, are enough to operate a cruising sailing yacht. The rest of the crew is needed for a drink after mooring.

33.A very large percentage of those who have completed sailing schools and received skipper’s certificates do not go to sea on their own. Because it’s scary — more often than not, this is the main reason.

34. Surely, there are skippers who do not use foul language on board and say «please, fix the staysail sheet.» But I have not met such people.

35. Never in my life have I heard a «Mayday» on the radio — this is a marine SOS. That is, no one drowned / burned / died while I was at sea. I guess, I was lucky.

36. While the yacht is at sea, both boys and girls should do their business in the latrine SITTING. Otherwise, rolling will lead to a toilet being pissed from floor to ceiling.

37. Sea knots and their knowledge do not make you a sailor. I remember and knit just 8-10 knots right away. It was always enough for me. However, the majority of pretentious sofa yachtsmen will tell you that without knowing 145 knots and astronavigation it is better not to go out to sea. They really had better not go.

38. The main modern device for coastal recreational navigation is the iPad. Plus one more spare iPad. By the way, Airbus and Boeing pilots also fly with the iPad.

39.The well-known life jackets are a rather poor means of safety during cruise yachting. The only thing that can almost guarantee your survival if you fall overboard is the fastening, the special systems that tie you to the side of the yacht. In the event of a fall, the sailor remains tied to the yacht and only needs to be pulled up. If you fall overboard in a life jacket, there is absolutely no guarantee that the crew on board will return for you in time or even find you. The mere fact of staying afloat does not guarantee survival at all.

40. In really bad weather, you have to stay at home or in a bar. But if you find yourself at sea, then the further you are from the shore, the better for you. It is much easier to crash against rocks than to die in open water. The water is always safer than the shore.

41. A lot of yachtsmen who sail around the world and who have tons of experience don’t care about:

b) gloves and gortex;

c) the order on the ship;

d) bad and good omens;

e) maritime traditions;

e-z) the rest of the crap, which beginners believe in.

42. A lot of yachtsmen who sail around the world and who have tons of experience really care about:

a) the state of the engine;

b) the amount of fresh water;

c) the number of iPads and spare power banks;

d) satellite communications and weather forecasts;

e) the presence of whiskey and rum on board;

e-i) the condition of the rigging and sails, and other vital things.

43. If you bought a yacht and plan to live on it in the Schengen area, there are many relatively legal ways to get around the 90 days per half year rule. The main thing is that you have a valid visa. The rest can be fixed.

44. Most voyages around the world look like this: you leave point A and go to point B. There you stay for several months and wait for the weather. Then to point C. And again stay and wait for the right season, etc. Therefore, it takes 2.5-3 years to travel around the world in a big circle. Although you can try to go around in a small circle — for example, around the Arctic.

45.It is not easy for dogs on board the yacht. Especially large and those who went to sea with the owner being a big dog, not a puppy. It is almost impossible to toilet train an adult dog on board. Therefore, the dogs wait. Yes, they can wait for 3-5 days. And such a dog can only be transported across the ocean by plane. With cats it is, of course, easier, and they make excellent sailors.

46. There are two types of satellite internet that travelers use: slow and expensive. Slow is not the «slow» one that you imagined when you remembered how your Facebook was updated for a couple of minutes. Slow satellite internet will download a small picture for about half an hour. And this picture will cost 25-30 bucks. And it can also be expensive: 1 gigabyte of fast satellite Internet in the ocean costs several thousand dollars.

48. I am often asked: are the oceans crossed over without any stops? The answer is: absolutely. Well, that is, you can stop right in the ocean and take a break, but why would you do that. And there are very few islands when crossing the oceans, and it takes weeks to go from land to land.

48. Most of the marine inhabitants that I have seen in different waters are pensioners. No, of course there are young people and families with children, but still the majority are 60+ people. I understand why. First, as already mentioned, sailing through the seas and oceans is boring. Secondly, you need a lot of free time. Thirdly, you need some passive income. Fourthly, sitting at anchorage for months with a glass of wine is a dream, of course, but only for those who have already seen life. I haven’t seen it yet, apparently.

49. One of the things yachtsmen are afraid of is containers that have fallen from container ships. According to statistics, hundreds of containers fall from ships into the oceans every year. And some of them sink rather slowly. Therefore, a yacht always has the risk of running into a half-flooded iron box and breaking the hull.

50. Yachtsmen are also afraid of whales. In general, whales don’t care about yachts and people on them. But during the migration of whales with their babies, happy parents are somewhat nervous about anything that can potentially threaten babies. Therefore, they can become aggressive towards you and your boat. There is also a chance to crash into a sleeping whale, but he is unlikely to be aggressive in this case. And the last occasion for a close acquaintance with this sea chubby is if your bottom is painted with white or light paint. Some sexually active male whales may mistake your boat for a white-bellied vicious female and try to come close for very specific purposes. Not a fun perspective

51. Your yacht is your own territory that obeys the laws of the country of registration of that yacht. Therefore, if, for example, in the country of registration you can legally buy a machine gun or a grenade launcher, then you have every right to carry these weapons on board. But, of course, it must be declared when crossing sea borders.

52. For some reason, many people think that all sailors are great swimmers. This is often not the case. I, for one, don’t swim very well. At the same time, I know several skippers who generally barely stay on the water and do not really like this. And this does not interfere with their sailing hobbies at all.

Anything that seems to be intended for yachting is immediately expensive.

53.Board games can be found in some liferafts. They are there so that the unfortunate sailors would not go crazy with boredom waiting to be rescued.

54. The best yachtsmen and yachting instructors I have ever seen or known are British. Generally speaking, for the British to go out on a boat to the sea is the same as for us to go buy bread.

55. Cruise sailing is when the yachtsman lies, walks and sails at the same time. Indeed, 90% of the time in long crossings, their participants spend in a horizontal position, and not jumping on the deck. It is funny when we are asked whether we have lost weight during the crossing. No, we haven’t.

56. Anything that seems to be intended for yachting is immediately expensive. For example, there are two first-aid kits in an Italian store — one with a car drawn on it, and the other with a boat. I asked to see them and made sure that the items inside are identical. The one with the boat was 50% more expensive. I asked why. Cause it`s for the boats — was the answer.

57. When you buy your first yacht, you immediately want to pour money into it, regardless of whether you have it. You start buying all sorts of shit, happily install it and test it in action. You make sure that shit is shit, you dismantle it and sell it on to the next experimenter. For example, I bought my Westerly for 60 thousand euros and invested another 25 thousand into it in the first couple of months. Of course, 90% of those 25 were wasted.

In the life of every yachtsman there are at least 2 happy days: the first is when he bought a yacht and the second — when he sold it.

58. There are no universal yachts, that is, you cannot buy a yacht that will be good for racing, for sailing on weekends and for long journeys with accommodation on board. Some shipyards are experimenting with what they call «performance cruisers» — to both race and cruise, but they are still too light for the oceans and too heavy for sports.

P. S. All this is true for boats of relatively small size and cost. This does not apply to yachts from 25 meters long — doing everything on them is fun. But it’s expensive.

59. Many yachtsmen, at some point in their development, start planning to cross the ocean. If we talk about Europeans, then this is, of course, the transatlantic crossing from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. This crossing has its own seasonality (December-January) and, in general, is quite simple and safe, as it passes through the zone of constant strong trade winds. In fact, this is a high-speed highway for sailing yachts — you get on the trade wind and fly. But after arriving in the Caribbean, one day you will have to decide what to do next with the yacht. The return journey is much more difficult and longer, so the yachtsman faces a choice:

a) continue to travel around the world and go to the Pacific Ocean;

b) leave the yacht in the Caribbean as a summer residence and fly home;

c) sail back, despite all the difficulties;

d) sell a yacht in the Caribbean for a penny and fly home.

Due to the fact that quite a few people use the «d» option, in the Caribbean you can sometimes buy a rather cheap boat.

60. A well-known saying goes like this: «In the life of every yachtsman there are at least 2 happy days: the first is when he bought a yacht and the second — when he sold it.» You can’t even imagine how true this is.

61. On all modern yachts, everything is made of modern materials. The hull is made of fiberglass or carbon fiber, the ropes are polyester, the sails are dacron, carbon or kevlar and so on. No one has been using any canvas for a long time. It is all the more surprising to hear from old-school yachtsmen about the ways of navigation that were used at the time of Columbus.

62.Almost everyone gets sea sick on yachts. Another thing is that it does not always come to vomiting. Seasickness is different for different people, and you can often fight it with items on hand: 50 grams of spirits, a look at the horizon, dramina and so on. After a while (from 12 to 36 hours), the body will accept its fate and will stop tormenting you, but only until the next stop at the shore, and then everything will start all over again. There is a popular myth that the vestibular apparatus can be trained once and for life. This is not so — there are no methods of training known to science. Before deciding on a sea voyage, you need to think: «Do I get car sick, bus sick or plane sick?» If the answer is yes, then yachting may not be for you.

63. It is forbidden to go to Antarctica on non-metallic yachts — the hull must be steel or aluminum.

64. To rent a charter yacht, you do not need to have a skipper’s license. You can just live on it at the pier without going out to sea. A fun alternative to a hostel.

65.In Norway, you can often find retired people living on rather expensive (1-3 million euros) motor yachts. These yachts are moored to the pier and never go to sea. But there are flowers, animals and grandchildren. During our cruises, we often came across such old people, they are very hospitable and sociable — they always invited us to drink something in the evening.

66. My yacht was taken across the ocean by two people, Edgars Vanags and Kirill Brui, widely known in narrow circles. I wrote to Edgars on Facebook: «Hi, will you take my boat across the Atlantic, I do not have time — I have a big regatta soon?» A minute later, he answered me: «Great, I will do it.» So everything was decided. And Kirill even became the yachtsman of the year in Belarus thanks to this crossing.

67. The flag, which hangs somewhere in the stern of the yacht, symbolizes the country of registration of this yacht. The country of registration does not necessarily have something to do with the owner or the skipper — you can choose it according to your personal criteria. That is, if you see a yacht with, for example, a British flag, the probability that the British own it is fifty-fifty.

68. Fishing in the ocean can be simple. If you leave a flashlight on the deck at night, then flying fish are guaranteed to fly into its light. They will fly in to die right on board. If you notice them in time, you can hang them on a rope and air-dry like roach. And if you notice it too late, you will then go and look where the stench comes from.

69. There is statistical evidence that people in liferafts and lifeboats are more likely to die from despair than from exhaustion. There is no proof, if you don’t want to — don’t believe it.

70. The Solent Strait, where the Seanation Cup takes place during the May holidays, is known as the best place for regattas on Earth. Local athletes have a high level of training, and most importantly, a good knowledge of the characteristics of the water area (which is extremely important there), therefore they compete not only and not so much in yachting skills, but in bullying. Moral pressure and humiliation of the enemy, as well as attempts to provoke and deceive, is a normal practice when passing marks, start and finish lines.

71. In ocean conditions, you can wash yourself, including rather long female hair, using only 1 liter of fresh water.

72. Electricity on a yacht can be produced in a variety of ways:

a) diesel, if there is a supply of diesel fuel;

b) solar panels, if there is sun;

c) a wind generator, if there is wind;

d) water turbine, if there is wind and you are sailing.

As a rule, there is always something mentioned above. If there is nothing, you are out of luck. I know people who put all 4 devices on their boats. It usually doesn’t make much sense, but these people explain this decision by the love of electricity. Vasily Surikov, for example, loves it.

73. If you don’t like someone, then here’s a way to have perfect murder. Take this person with you on a crossing in the open sea, or better yet, the ocean. At some point in time, this person for some reason ends up on board — to pee or just to watch the sunset. You push the person, and the yacht follows its course but without the unpleasant passenger already. It is better to do this at night, since you will have several hours of head start before you start shouting into the radio about the tragedy that has happened — you were asleep and do not know where, when and why the person went. There are no signs of a struggle on the deck, so it didn’t happen. Yachting is dangerous, anything can happen. There were such precedents, maybe people fell off, or maybe ...

74. The very fact of bouts of seasickness is not a reason not to go to sea. Once Constantine crossed the Atlantic with us. He vomited every day for 21 days. Sometimes several times a day. According to him, he liked the crossing. He did not take advantage of the opportunity to go ashore during a stop in Cape Verde, saying: «Well, there is nothing to worry about, everything is ok.»

The fact is that it is enough to drag a couple of ropes back and forth for the yacht to move somehow, and for many this is enough.

75. The most useful device for a cruising yachtsman after the iPad is the Garmin InReach satellite tracker. This gadget has a built-in Iridium transceiver, which means that you are connected from anywhere in the earth’s geoid. Email, Facebook, sms, etc. And for very little money. No, this is not an advertisement, although it looks like that.

76. A little more about corpses and yachting. A group of middle-aged men were sailing on a yacht across the ocean, and about the middle of this crossing, one of the sailors died. He had an ulcer, or something of this sort. The guys rushed to call lawyers in Russia and Barbados, suggesting to throw him overboard, since it was warm outside, and the guy started to rot. Lawyers were against it — take him with you, they said, since you had already informed everyone about the accident. Well, so they had to do it. They wrapped a friend in a film, put him in a dingy (an inflatable small boat) and tied it behind the yacht. So they were sailing with it for several days until they arrived in Barbados. Everything would be ok, but the wind on this crossing was blowing from behind — I don’t know how the guys were breathing.

77. One of the few nations that is still difficult to meet on yachts is the Chinese. I am sure that they will be there soon. But recently, in a large marina of Athens, a Chinese man approached me and asked me whether I have seen a catamaran with Chinese. In fact, I did, and I told him where to look for it. Because there was only one such boat out of 2 thousand ones in the marina.

78. The most expensive marinas, as far as I know, are in Ibiza and southern Italy. During the high season, a mid-size charter yacht pays up to € 300 per night. At the same time, mooring in Portugal, for example, will cost 11-15 euros per night.

79. If you are an exhibitionist, nudist, voyeur or just an masturbator, then the best place for you is the waters of the Balearic Islands — Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca. In no other place have I seen so many naked yachtsmen and yachtswomen. Of course, most of them are older people.

Snobbery is what a beginning Russian yachtsman will have immediately after receiving a skipper’s certificate.

80. SENSATION! SHOCK! Sail tuning and cruising yachting are often incompatible things. Not only do cruise boats do not have a variety of sails, but skippers, for the most part, do not have an understanding of what to do with these sails. The fact is that it is enough to drag a couple of ropes back and forth for the yacht to move somehow, and for many this is enough. So, when you see tons of ropes, remember that many yachtsmen don’t understand what to do with them either.

81. Every ocean marina has a message board. And on it, there are a lot of notes with texts like this: «I am John from Australia and I am going on my 40-feet yacht from Tenerife to Brazil. I am looking for an assistant or two. I will pay all the expenses.» Or something like that. So, there is a whole niche for adventure seekers. On the one hand, you can travel the world for free, on the other hand, you will have yachting practice.

82. More often I met gay men on Italian yachts. They travel in couples and sometimes with dogs.

83. I have never heard that those who played football since childhood and played in semi- or professional football teams, tried to preach or criticize those who casually play football in the yard. In yachting, it happens all the time. Snobbery is what a beginning Russian yachtsman will have immediately after receiving a skipper’s certificate. It is about Russian yachtsmen. I did not notice such an attitude towards beginners or inexperienced sailors among the British, Norwegians or French.

84. Children from 6 to 12 years old, if they are not on a yacht from birth, are rather bored at sea. While adults pretend to be amazed by the sunrises, sunsets and the rustle of the waves, the kids have to play iPads and eat cookies. Catamarans and a cheerful children’s parties are an exception. I have never met kids that would look forward to spending a week or two with their parents on a yacht.

85. Despite the fact that the range of sea VHF communications is very limited and is only tens of miles in the open ocean, on the radio I regularly heard monologues in languages unknown to me, individual phrases, and sometimes even songs. At the same time, the radar did not show any ships around, and the nearest land was more than a thousand miles away.

86.There are birds in the ocean. Those who, in fact, live in the ocean. When they see a yacht, they want to sit on the mast or deck to rest (some of them are in continuous flight for many months). If you allow this, the birds are guaranteed to shit on everything they can, including the anchor fire, which is located at the very top of the mast, after which you will have to climb there and wash it from shit.

87. After Russia took Crimea, no European insurance company insures yachts owned by Russians. There are three ways out: do not insure, get a residence permit / permanent residence anywhere other than Russia, or register a yacht in a legal entity of any country other than Russia.

88.A border patrol arrives at one of the anchorages of the island of Guadeloupe every day from 1 pm to 2 pm, goes on its boat around the yachts and checks passports for visas. The fact is that, despite belonging to France, to enter Guadeloupe, you need a French island visa. Moreover, not only Russians, but citizens of many states need it. The penalty for not having this visa is insane. Therefore, all the intruders (including us) every day at 12:30 got into their boats and sailed ashore, from where we were looking at the confused actions of the Guadalupean patrol.

89. If you are dreaming of your own yacht or just want to ask the price, then some of the most interesting places in terms of prices and range are Sweden and Norway. There are a lot of boats on sale, and the prices are very attractive. In the case of Sweden, until recently there were a lot of excellent local shipyards there, and the boats they built will be valued for a very long time due to their high quality and reliability. Norway is a different story. Norway, as you know, is NOT a member of the European Union. And therefore, the yachts registered there are not cleared for EU customs. What does this mean? It means that the Europeans-neighbors (Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Poland and Germany) will never go to buy a second-hand yacht in Norway, as they will have to clear it at home.

90. In most countries, a skipper’s blood alcohol level should not exceed that of a car driver. For example, in the UK — 0.8 ppm — about 150 grams of vodka for an average man weighing 80kg.

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Gagarin Cup Preview: Atlant vs. Salavat Yulaev

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Gagarin cup (khl) finals:  atlant moscow oblast vs. salavat yulaev ufa.

Much like the Elitserien Finals, we have a bit of an offense vs. defense match-up in this league Final.  While Ufa let their star top line of Alexander Radulov, Patrick Thoresen and Igor Grigorenko loose on the KHL's Western Conference, Mytischi played a more conservative style, relying on veterans such as former NHLers Jan Bulis, Oleg Petrov, and Jaroslav Obsut.  Just reaching the Finals is a testament to Atlant's disciplined style of play, as they had to knock off much more high profile teams from Yaroslavl and St. Petersburg to do so.  But while they did finish 8th in the league in points, they haven't seen the likes of Ufa, who finished 2nd. 

This series will be a challenge for the underdog, because unlike some of the other KHL teams, Ufa's top players are generally younger and in their prime.  Only Proshkin amongst regular blueliners is over 30, with the work being shared by Kirill Koltsov (28), Andrei Kuteikin (26), Miroslav Blatak (28), Maxim Kondratiev (28) and Dmitri Kalinin (30).  Oleg Tverdovsky hasn't played a lot in the playoffs to date.  Up front, while led by a fairly young top line (24-27), Ufa does have a lot of veterans in support roles:  Vyacheslav Kozlov , Viktor Kozlov , Vladimir Antipov, Sergei Zinovyev and Petr Schastlivy are all over 30.  In fact, the names of all their forwards are familiar to international and NHL fans:  Robert Nilsson , Alexander Svitov, Oleg Saprykin and Jakub Klepis round out the group, all former NHL players.

For Atlant, their veteran roster, with only one of their top six D under the age of 30 (and no top forwards under 30, either), this might be their one shot at a championship.  The team has never won either a Russian Superleague title or the Gagarin Cup, and for players like former NHLer Oleg Petrov, this is probably the last shot at the KHL's top prize.  The team got three extra days rest by winning their Conference Final in six games, and they probably needed to use it.  Atlant does have younger regulars on their roster, but they generally only play a few shifts per game, if that. 

The low event style of game for Atlant probably suits them well, but I don't know how they can manage to keep up against Ufa's speed, skill, and depth.  There is no advantage to be seen in goal, with Erik Ersberg and Konstantin Barulin posting almost identical numbers, and even in terms of recent playoff experience Ufa has them beat.  Luckily for Atlant, Ufa isn't that far away from the Moscow region, so travel shouldn't play a major role. 

I'm predicting that Ufa, winners of the last Superleague title back in 2008, will become the second team to win the Gagarin Cup, and will prevail in five games.  They have a seriously well built team that would honestly compete in the NHL.  They represent the potential of the league, while Atlant represents closer to the reality, as a team full of players who played themselves out of the NHL. 

• Atlant @ Ufa, Friday Apr 8 (3:00 PM CET/10:00 PM EST)
• Atlant @ Ufa, Sunday Apr 10 (1:00 PM CET/8:00 AM EST)
• Ufa @ Atlant, Tuesday Apr 12 (5:30 PM CET/12:30 PM EST)
• Ufa @ Atlant, Thursday Apr 14 (5:30 PM CET/12:30 PM EST)

Games 5-7 are as yet unscheduled, but every second day is the KHL standard, so expect Game 5 to be on Saturday, like an early start. 

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Northern Yacht Club sets sail with significant upgrades

From: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

News release

Federal investment helps upgrade dock, power, and water services infrastructure in North Sydney

May 9, 2024 · North Sydney, Nova Scotia · Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA)

Marine tourism plays an important role in attracting visitors to Cape Breton’s shores, contributing to its economic growth. The Northern Yacht Club in North Sydney acts as a gathering point for boaters from near and far, drawing visitors to the area and contributing to a vibrant community.

Jaime Battiste, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Member of Parliament for Sydney – Victoria, today announced a non-repayable contribution of $147,400 to the Northern Yacht Club to help upgrade the club’s facilities and services. This announcement was made on behalf of the Honourable Gudie Hutchings, Minister of Rural Economic Development and Minister responsible for ACOA.

This investment will support a number of upgrades including replacing aging infrastructure and installing environmentally friendly, plastic EZ docks, which are easier to maintain and more resilient against the harsh maritime weather. New power and water pedestals will also replace those lost in recent storms, improving safety and functionality of the marina. This project ensures the club can continue to promote boating in the region and provide the facilities necessary to support visiting vessels from Canada and international ports.

By investing in projects like this one, the Government of Canada is strengthening its commitment to helping communities flourish and pursue opportunities for growth.

"We support brighter futures and stronger local communities when we invest in infrastructure. Your federal government is proud to support the North Sydney Yacht Club to ensure that it can continue to welcome both local and international visitors for another 100 years. This will ensure North Sydney's economy sails to greater successes.” - The Honourable Gudie Hutchings, Minister of Rural Economic Development and Minister responsible for ACOA

"Situated near Sydney and attractions like the Cabot Trail, the Northern Yacht Club is a prime spot for sailors and tourists. With these upgrades, the club is enhancing its appeal as a destination for all.” - Jaime Battiste, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Member of Parliament for Sydney – Victoria

“The Northern Yacht Club is very appreciative of the support from ACOA as it strives to make necessary improvements in its docking facilities and services. As a result of this contribution, the club will continue to provide top notch, accessible docking for its members and visiting boaters from Canada and around the world.” - John Astephen, Commodore, Northern Yacht Club

Quick facts

The Northern Yacht Club (NYC) has a rich sailing and event hosting history, including international, national, and regional events. In 2025, the club will celebrate its 100 th anniversary with a season full of special events and a week-long regatta.

During the summers of 2014, 2015, and 2016, NYC participated in Race the Cape, playing host to keelboats from various ports in the Maritimes and the Eastern United States. In 2022, the club hosted the Mobility Cup, an international regatta for sailors with disabilities.

The funding announced today is provided through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s (ACOA)  Innovative Communities Fund (ICF) .

The ICF builds on the strengths of communities and provides the tools needed to identify opportunities for sustainable economic growth.

Related products

• Northern Yacht Club Casts a Wider Net for Clientele
• Northern Yacht Club

Connor Burton Press Secretary Office of the Minister of Rural Economic Development and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency [email protected]  

Lauren Sinclair Director of Communications Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency [email protected] 782-641-6365  

John Astephen Commodore Northern Yacht Club [email protected] 902-574-4845

Stay connected

Follow ACOA on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn and Instagram .

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Time in Elektrostal , Moscow Oblast, Russia now

• Tokyo 08:24PM
• Beijing 07:24PM
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• Paris 01:24PM
• London 12:24PM
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Time zone info for Elektrostal

• The time in Elektrostal is 8 hours ahead of the time in New York when New York is on standard time, and 7 hours ahead of the time in New York when New York is on daylight saving time.
• Elektrostal does not change between summer time and winter time.
• The IANA time zone identifier for Elektrostal is Europe/Moscow.

Time difference from Elektrostal

Sunrise, sunset, day length and solar time for elektrostal.

• Sunrise: 04:06AM
• Sunset: 08:40PM
• Day length: 16h 34m
• Solar noon: 12:23PM
• The current local time in Elektrostal is 23 minutes ahead of apparent solar time.

Elektrostal on the map

• Location: Moscow Oblast, Russia
• Latitude: 55.79. Longitude: 38.46
• Population: 144,000

Best restaurants in Elektrostal

• #1 Tolsty medved - Steakhouses food
• #2 Ermitazh - European and japanese food
• #3 Pechka - European and french food

Find best places to eat in Elektrostal

• Best business lunch restaurants in Elektrostal
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The 50 largest cities in Russia

40 Facts About Elektrostal

Written by Lanette Mayes

Modified & Updated: 17 May 2024

Reviewed by Jessica Corbett

Elektrostal is a vibrant city located in the Moscow Oblast region of Russia. With a rich history, stunning architecture, and a thriving community, Elektrostal is a city that has much to offer. Whether you are a history buff, nature enthusiast, or simply curious about different cultures, Elektrostal is sure to captivate you.

This article will provide you with 40 fascinating facts about Elektrostal, giving you a better understanding of why this city is worth exploring. From its origins as an industrial hub to its modern-day charm, we will delve into the various aspects that make Elektrostal a unique and must-visit destination.

So, join us as we uncover the hidden treasures of Elektrostal and discover what makes this city a true gem in the heart of Russia.

Key Takeaways:

• Elektrostal, known as the “Motor City of Russia,” is a vibrant and growing city with a rich industrial history, offering diverse cultural experiences and a strong commitment to environmental sustainability.
• With its convenient location near Moscow, Elektrostal provides a picturesque landscape, vibrant nightlife, and a range of recreational activities, making it an ideal destination for residents and visitors alike.

Known as the “Motor City of Russia.”

Elektrostal, a city located in the Moscow Oblast region of Russia, earned the nickname “Motor City” due to its significant involvement in the automotive industry.

Home to the Elektrostal Metallurgical Plant.

Elektrostal is renowned for its metallurgical plant, which has been producing high-quality steel and alloys since its establishment in 1916.

Boasts a rich industrial heritage.

Elektrostal has a long history of industrial development, contributing to the growth and progress of the region.

Founded in 1916.

The city of Elektrostal was founded in 1916 as a result of the construction of the Elektrostal Metallurgical Plant.

Located approximately 50 kilometers east of Moscow.

Elektrostal is situated in close proximity to the Russian capital, making it easily accessible for both residents and visitors.

Known for its vibrant cultural scene.

Elektrostal is home to several cultural institutions, including museums, theaters, and art galleries that showcase the city’s rich artistic heritage.

A popular destination for nature lovers.

Surrounded by picturesque landscapes and forests, Elektrostal offers ample opportunities for outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, and birdwatching.

Hosts the annual Elektrostal City Day celebrations.

Every year, Elektrostal organizes festive events and activities to celebrate its founding, bringing together residents and visitors in a spirit of unity and joy.

Has a population of approximately 160,000 people.

Elektrostal is home to a diverse and vibrant community of around 160,000 residents, contributing to its dynamic atmosphere.

Boasts excellent education facilities.

The city is known for its well-established educational institutions, providing quality education to students of all ages.

A center for scientific research and innovation.

Elektrostal serves as an important hub for scientific research, particularly in the fields of metallurgy, materials science, and engineering.

Surrounded by picturesque lakes.

The city is blessed with numerous beautiful lakes, offering scenic views and recreational opportunities for locals and visitors alike.

Well-connected transportation system.

Elektrostal benefits from an efficient transportation network, including highways, railways, and public transportation options, ensuring convenient travel within and beyond the city.

Famous for its traditional Russian cuisine.

Food enthusiasts can indulge in authentic Russian dishes at numerous restaurants and cafes scattered throughout Elektrostal.

Home to notable architectural landmarks.

Elektrostal boasts impressive architecture, including the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord and the Elektrostal Palace of Culture.

Offers a wide range of recreational facilities.

Residents and visitors can enjoy various recreational activities, such as sports complexes, swimming pools, and fitness centers, enhancing the overall quality of life.

Provides a high standard of healthcare.

Elektrostal is equipped with modern medical facilities, ensuring residents have access to quality healthcare services.

Home to the Elektrostal History Museum.

The Elektrostal History Museum showcases the city’s fascinating past through exhibitions and displays.

A hub for sports enthusiasts.

Elektrostal is passionate about sports, with numerous stadiums, arenas, and sports clubs offering opportunities for athletes and spectators.

Celebrates diverse cultural festivals.

Throughout the year, Elektrostal hosts a variety of cultural festivals, celebrating different ethnicities, traditions, and art forms.

Electric power played a significant role in its early development.

Elektrostal owes its name and initial growth to the establishment of electric power stations and the utilization of electricity in the industrial sector.

Boasts a thriving economy.

The city’s strong industrial base, coupled with its strategic location near Moscow, has contributed to Elektrostal’s prosperous economic status.

Houses the Elektrostal Drama Theater.

The Elektrostal Drama Theater is a cultural centerpiece, attracting theater enthusiasts from far and wide.

Popular destination for winter sports.

Elektrostal’s proximity to ski resorts and winter sport facilities makes it a favorite destination for skiing, snowboarding, and other winter activities.

Promotes environmental sustainability.

Elektrostal prioritizes environmental protection and sustainability, implementing initiatives to reduce pollution and preserve natural resources.

Home to renowned educational institutions.

Elektrostal is known for its prestigious schools and universities, offering a wide range of academic programs to students.

Committed to cultural preservation.

The city values its cultural heritage and takes active steps to preserve and promote traditional customs, crafts, and arts.

Hosts an annual International Film Festival.

The Elektrostal International Film Festival attracts filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts from around the world, showcasing a diverse range of films.

Encourages entrepreneurship and innovation.

Elektrostal supports aspiring entrepreneurs and fosters a culture of innovation, providing opportunities for startups and business development.

Offers a range of housing options.

Elektrostal provides diverse housing options, including apartments, houses, and residential complexes, catering to different lifestyles and budgets.

Home to notable sports teams.

Elektrostal is proud of its sports legacy, with several successful sports teams competing at regional and national levels.

Boasts a vibrant nightlife scene.

Residents and visitors can enjoy a lively nightlife in Elektrostal, with numerous bars, clubs, and entertainment venues.

Promotes cultural exchange and international relations.

Elektrostal actively engages in international partnerships, cultural exchanges, and diplomatic collaborations to foster global connections.

Surrounded by beautiful nature reserves.

Nearby nature reserves, such as the Barybino Forest and Luchinskoye Lake, offer opportunities for nature enthusiasts to explore and appreciate the region’s biodiversity.

Commemorates historical events.

The city pays tribute to significant historical events through memorials, monuments, and exhibitions, ensuring the preservation of collective memory.

Promotes sports and youth development.

Elektrostal invests in sports infrastructure and programs to encourage youth participation, health, and physical fitness.

Hosts annual cultural and artistic festivals.

Throughout the year, Elektrostal celebrates its cultural diversity through festivals dedicated to music, dance, art, and theater.

Provides a picturesque landscape for photography enthusiasts.

The city’s scenic beauty, architectural landmarks, and natural surroundings make it a paradise for photographers.

Connects to Moscow via a direct train line.

The convenient train connection between Elektrostal and Moscow makes commuting between the two cities effortless.

A city with a bright future.

Elektrostal continues to grow and develop, aiming to become a model city in terms of infrastructure, sustainability, and quality of life for its residents.

In conclusion, Elektrostal is a fascinating city with a rich history and a vibrant present. From its origins as a center of steel production to its modern-day status as a hub for education and industry, Elektrostal has plenty to offer both residents and visitors. With its beautiful parks, cultural attractions, and proximity to Moscow, there is no shortage of things to see and do in this dynamic city. Whether you’re interested in exploring its historical landmarks, enjoying outdoor activities, or immersing yourself in the local culture, Elektrostal has something for everyone. So, next time you find yourself in the Moscow region, don’t miss the opportunity to discover the hidden gems of Elektrostal.

Q: What is the population of Elektrostal?

A: As of the latest data, the population of Elektrostal is approximately XXXX.

Q: How far is Elektrostal from Moscow?

A: Elektrostal is located approximately XX kilometers away from Moscow.

Q: Are there any famous landmarks in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal is home to several notable landmarks, including XXXX and XXXX.

Q: What industries are prominent in Elektrostal?

A: Elektrostal is known for its steel production industry and is also a center for engineering and manufacturing.

Q: Are there any universities or educational institutions in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal is home to XXXX University and several other educational institutions.

Q: What are some popular outdoor activities in Elektrostal?

A: Elektrostal offers several outdoor activities, such as hiking, cycling, and picnicking in its beautiful parks.

Q: Is Elektrostal well-connected in terms of transportation?

A: Yes, Elektrostal has good transportation links, including trains and buses, making it easily accessible from nearby cities.

Q: Are there any annual events or festivals in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal hosts various events and festivals throughout the year, including XXXX and XXXX.

Elektrostal's fascinating history, vibrant culture, and promising future make it a city worth exploring. For more captivating facts about cities around the world, discover the unique characteristics that define each city . Uncover the hidden gems of Moscow Oblast through our in-depth look at Kolomna. Lastly, dive into the rich industrial heritage of Teesside, a thriving industrial center with its own story to tell.

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