Tall Ship Adventure
A real ocean passage on a traditional brigantine, no experience needed.
Tall ship adventure
Three to six weeks of open-ocean sailing on a working brigantine. Watch rotation, square-sail handling, the equator at midnight, landfall in tropical Brazil or the green Azores. Two transatlantic crossings in 2027, both available as full legs.
To sail across the Atlantic ocean on a brigantine is to spend three to six weeks in a world that stops when you leave the dock. The last green coast falls behind. The swell deepens. The ship settles into the watch rotation, four hours on deck, eight below, and that rhythm becomes your life until the next landfall.
Days blur in a way they never do on land. You wake for a 04:00 watch, steer for an hour under a sky full of stars, trim the mainsail when the wind shifts, and hand over at 08:00 smelling of salt and coffee. You sleep through lunch. You get up, you read, you help with a sail change, you eat dinner with the crew, and you're back on deck at 20:00 for the long evening watch. Days of the week stop mattering. The date on the chart is the only calendar that counts.
Open-ocean sailing is also full of life you never see from land. Dolphins ride the bow wave for hours. Whales surface off the beam, blow once, and disappear. Petrels and shearwaters stitch the waves behind the ship for thousands of miles. And then one morning the watch on deck shouts "land ho" and a low grey smudge lifts over the horizon, and every ordinary thing about life on land feels like a small miracle. That's the moment most Atlantic crossers come back for.
Brigantine NEPTUN crosses the Atlantic twice during the 2027 season: a forty-four-day South Atlantic crossing in the first quarter, and the classic North Atlantic trade-wind run home in late spring.
Leg 5, Saldanha Bay to Fortaleza (2 January to 14 March 2027). Forty-four days of continuous trade-wind sailing with a single port call at Saint Helena, Napoleon's island, one of the most remote inhabited places on earth. The equator crossing happens about halfway. 3,739 nautical miles, almost all of it downwind. The arrival in tropical Brazil after six weeks of ocean is one of the great landfalls in modern sailing.
Leg 8, Antigua to the Azores (20 May to 15 July 2027) is the spring homecoming passage that generations of European tall ships have sailed. Antigua to Bermuda for provisioning, then the long reach east to Ponta Delgada. 2,876 nautical miles of North Atlantic with more variable weather than the southern crossing. Leg 9 closes the voyage from the Azores through Guernsey and Helgoland to Kiel on 25 August.
An Atlantic crossing sounds like something you should already know how to do before you sign up. You shouldn't. NEPTUN is a sail training ship, which means the whole point is to teach you, during the passage, on watch, with the people who are doing it alongside you. The first week is a fast learning curve. By week two you're setting sails as part of the watch, standing a helm trick in rougher weather, and starting to understand what the weather routers are saying. By landfall you have a couple of thousand ocean miles in a logbook.
Read more about how beginners actually handle long passages on sailing without experience, or our deeper guide to learning traditional seamanship.
A transatlantic passage teaches you more in a month than a season of weekend sailing. The reason is simple: the ship doesn't stop. You'll handle traditional rigging, square sails forward, fore-and-aft aft, the whole inventory of a brigantine. You'll learn to set, reef, and strike sail in a seaway. You'll steer to a compass course, then to wind, then by stars. You'll take sights with a sextant. You'll keep a proper deck log. You'll whip the end of a three-strand line so cleanly the boatswain nods at you.
More than the skills, you'll learn to live inside the discipline that keeps a sailing ship safe. That's the real curriculum of traditional seamanship, taught on our sail training programme.
Trainee berths run at €79 per day, covering your bunk, all meals, fuel, harbour fees, safety gear, and ship's insurance. Membership in Foreningen Neptun, the nonprofit foreningen that owns and operates the ship, is a separate €37 per year. The reason it isn't priced like a charter is that it isn't one. Trainees pay to participate in operating the ship, not to be served by it.
Per-leg pricing varies by length and route. The 2027 voyage page lists current rates and availability. A Caribbean leg often pairs well with an Atlantic crossing, see sailing in the Caribbean for the legs that build experience before you leave the islands behind.
My experience was life changing.
I learned so much and made some very close friends around the world. We are still in contact.
I would recommend going on Neptun if you want to have some fun and learn great sailing tips and tricks, and experience the world with a different view.
Everybody was very kind and friendly and very helpful when you needed any help or advice or just an ear to listen.
Thank you Neptun for a great and life-changing experience.
It depends on the route and the weather. Brigantine NEPTUN's South Atlantic leg from South Africa to Brazil is roughly 44 days of continuous sailing, with one stop at Saint Helena. The North Atlantic leg from Antigua to the Azores runs around 40 days of sea time with a stop at Bermuda. For most trainees this means three to six weeks at sea per passage, depending on which leg you join and how many port stops you count.
No. NEPTUN is a sail training ship, and most trainees who cross the Atlantic with us have never sailed offshore before. You'll stand watches under the supervision of experienced crew, learn to handle lines and helm in your first days, and build up to setting square sails and reading weather during the passage. What matters is that you're in reasonable health, willing to work as part of a team, and comfortable with the idea of being out of sight of land for weeks at a time.
Most people who get seasick on an Atlantic crossing feel rough for the first two or three days and then adapt. The ship carries standard anti-nausea medication, and the watch system is designed so that anyone unwell can rest without leaving the crew short-handed. If you're prone to seasickness, talk to us before you apply, we can suggest leg choices with gentler departure conditions, and we can help you prepare. It's very rare for a trainee to stay sick for the whole passage.
The ship sails twenty-four hours a day. The crew is split into watches, typically four hours on, eight hours off, so everyone takes a share of the night. A night watch means steering, trimming sails, keeping lookout, logging position, and making cups of tea for the people coming on next. Off-watch you sleep. The rhythm sounds harsh in writing but settles quickly; by the end of the first week, most people find the night watches some of the best hours of the trip, quiet, starlit, and strangely intimate.
The South Atlantic leg (Saldanha Bay to Fortaleza via Saint Helena, January–March 2027) is warmer, longer, and more remote. You cross the equator, see Napoleon's island, and land in tropical Brazil. The North Atlantic leg (Antigua to the Azores via Bermuda, May–July 2027, continuing to Kiel on Leg 9) is the classic European homecoming route, shorter sea passages, more variable weather, and landfall in Europe at the end. Look at both on the year pages and pick the one that fits your calendar and your taste.
You ride it out. NEPTUN is a steel brigantine built for ocean work, with professional captains who plan routes to avoid the worst weather windows and shorten sail well before a front arrives. In heavy weather the watches keep running, but the ship is battened down below, cooking moves to cold food, and non-essential work stops. It's uncomfortable and loud and occasionally scary, but the ship is in her element. Every long-distance trainee has at least one gale story by the time they get home.
Yes. Each leg starts with several days of ship briefings, safety drills, rig familiarisation, and short shakedown sails before the passage begins. You won't leave the dock without knowing how to put on a harness, where the lifejackets are, how the watch system works, and what your job is when things get busy. The real deep-water skills come during the first week at sea, with patient teaching from people who have done this many times before.
Pick your crossing
Three of NEPTUN's seven legs are Atlantic crossings: Cape Town to Brazil, Antigua to the Azores, and the Azores homecoming to Kiel.
AvailableJan 2027 — Mar 2027 · Saldanha Bay, South Africa → Fortaleza, Brazil
Forty-four days before the southeast trades, Napoleon's exile at St. Helena, the equator crossing, and landfall in tropical Brazil. The ocean chapter of the voyage.
Read more about this leg → about Leg 5: across the South Atlantic from Saldanha to Fortaleza
AvailableMay 2027 — Jul 2027 · Antigua → Ponta Delgada, Azores
Fifty-six days on the classic spring tall-ship route home, Antigua, a long reach to Bermuda's pink sand, then three weeks of open ocean to the volcanic Azores.
Read more about this leg → about Leg 8: across the North Atlantic from Antigua to the Azores
AvailableJul 2027 — Aug 2027 · Ponta Delgada, Azores → Kiel, Germany
The final 1,878 nm, from volcanic São Miguel to the Baltic, up the English Channel through the Dover TSS, past Helgoland's red cliffs and home to Kiel.
Read more about this leg → about Leg 9: homecoming from the Azores to Kiel