Sailing & Small Boats

Exploring the world by sailboat or small motor craft gives you access to treasures — of the natural and human kind — that larger ships simply can’t offer you. These sorts of intimate adventures allow you to make one-of-a-kind discoveries and have local encounters not possible when traveling on other kinds of vessels.

If you’re looking to get away from gyms, business centers, and room service for a while, you can leisurely sail the Nile on a classic dahabeya, the kind of sailing ship that ferried Henry Morton Stanley (of Stanley and Livingstone fame) and generations of thrilled Thomas Cook travelers. In this comfortable type of boat, you can, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, “run the gauntlet before Eternity,” contemplating timeless riverside life and visiting the Temple of Horus at Edfu; the massive ruins of Kom Ombo; and Abu Simbel, a temple built by Ramesses II.

Board a small ship in Bali, and you can sail west into the Flores Sea to Komodo, Indonesia — famed for its dragons — and then do some island-hopping, delving into rare cultures and biosystems, turquoise bays, stunning reefs, and deserted pink, red, and white beaches. In Papua, New Guinea, you can visit the place, in the words of author J.P. McAuley, where “the earth dances, the mountains speak, and the doors of spirit open” on a stylishly beautiful, 164-foot, 18-cabin boat. In Iceland, your small ship of choice becomes a raft down the Hvítá River; while in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, a dugout canoe will float you on winding waterways and expansive floodplains under wide African skies.

So, recapture the anticipation and thrill of early explorers with a sailing or small-boat tour; but this time, make it in twenty-first-century comfort and safety.