The Thalassa is a 47-meter three-master and is one of the most beautiful and fastest sea sailing ships in the Dutch fleet. The ship was built in 1980 and will be our home for six months.
More info at https://schoolatsea.com/aan-boord/zeilen/#thalassa
On October 16, 2024, we will depart from the Netherlands and sail southwest. We will sail a route based on old sailing routes, making maximum use of trade winds.
Depending on the weather, the captain will decide whether we should wait for better weather conditions for a while in France, England or Spain, before arriving at our first real destination: Tenerife.
The first official destination is Tenerife. There we will climb El Teide, the volcano that created the island.
Once across the Atlantic Ocean, we land in Dominica. Here we will go on an excursion to the Rastafari people and learn about their culture and customs and also hike to the Boiling Lakes.
After Dominica, we sail on to the ABC Islands, where we dock in Curaçao's capital, Willemstad. Here we find a piece of the Netherlands and visit the slavery museum Kura Hulanda.
In Guna Yala (San Blas) we will do 3 days of survival and have to provide ourselves with food by fishing, eating coconuts and cooking on homemade fire. Then we will continue a little further west, where we will land in Panama and go on our own journey for 8 days. We will then leave with a small group of young people and a guide, with whom we may travel through the country.
After Panama, the journey back to the Netherlands begins. We sail north towards Cuba, where we get to explore the country on our own for the second time. Cuba is completely different from Europe and we get here again extensive time (8 days) to get to know the local customs.
After our own trip in Cuba, we sail on to Bermuda. Probably we will never again encounter two countries in succession that are so different from each other.
After Bermuda, we cross the Atlantic Ocean again toward the Azores. We dock on the island of Faial, where on the wharf we get to do a framework painting with all of us every year.