Some tall ship stories are about adventure by choice. This one is about a crew who had no choice at all - and sailed one of the most remarkable voyages of the modern era anyway.
First, What Exactly Is Bark Europa?
If you don't know her yet, Bark Europa is one of the most respected sail training ships on the water today. She started life in 1911 as a lightship on the river Elbe in Germany - not exactly a glamorous beginning - before being completely rebuilt over eight years and re-rigged as a three-masted barque once she arrived in the Netherlands in 1986. Since then, she's become a proper ocean-crossing sail training vessel, based out of Scheveningen, sailing everywhere from European tall ship races to full-blown expeditions to Antarctica.
What makes Europa special isn't just her age or her rig - it's her philosophy. She keeps things small, with a maximum of around 40 to 45 guest crew on board, so the whole voyage feels more like a tight-knit floating community than a cruise. Instruction is given "Dutch style" - no shouting, no whistles, no uniforms - and everyone aboard, sailing experience or not, is expected to actually help sail the ship: steering, line handling, standing watch, the whole deal. She's also famous in tall ship circles for piling on canvas that most modern ships don't bother with anymore, including her stun sails and sky sails - a genuinely rare sight these days.
So that's Europa on a normal day. But 2020 was not a normal year for anyone, and Europa's story that year became something else entirely.
When the World Shut Its Doors
In March 2020, Europa was finishing up her Antarctic season, crossing back through the Drake Passage toward Ushuaia - the southernmost city in the world, and her usual jumping-off point for polar expeditions. As the ship made her way north, word started reaching the crew about a virus spreading fast across the globe.
Her guest crew - the paying voyage crew who'd sailed down for the Antarctic trip - got remarkably lucky. They managed to catch the very last flights out of Argentina before the country sealed its borders completely. The permanent crew wasn't so fortunate. Nineteen of them, representing around a dozen different nationalities, found themselves stuck aboard, anchored in Ushuaia, with nowhere to go and no idea how long "nowhere to go" was going to last.
For ten days they sat at anchor, doing maintenance, watching the news, and waiting for some kind of clarity that never really came. The next leg of Europa's 2020 schedule was supposed to be a crossing of the Pacific to Australia. That plan quietly evaporated. Ports everywhere were closing one after another. Eventually, the crew and captain worked through the situation and landed on a fairly stark conclusion: there was exactly one port anywhere in the world still willing to take them in - Europa's own home port of Scheveningen, in the Netherlands. Ten thousand nautical miles away.
Deciding to Sail Home - the Hard Way
So that's what they did. On March 27th, 2020, under Dutch Captain Eric Kesteloo, Bark Europa slipped down the Beagle Channel and pointed her bow east into the Atlantic, carrying enough supplies to last two and a half months at sea. There would be no stopovers this time — not South Georgia, not South Africa, not St. Helena, none of the usual waypoints on a homeward Atlantic crossing. Every port on the way was closed anyway. It was going to be Ushuaia to Scheveningen, nonstop, on nothing but wind.
It's worth sitting with what that actually meant day to day. With no guest crew aboard to share the workload, every one of the nineteen professional crew had to step into jobs they wouldn't normally do - including an hour a day each on the helm, usually a task handed to guests learning the ropes. The Atlantic didn't make it easy either: long windless stretches where the ship barely moved, followed by a genuinely massive low-pressure system that the captain would later describe as one of the best weather systems he'd ever sailed - pushing Europa around a thousand miles closer to home in a single stretch.
Eighty-one days later, on June 17th, 2020, Bark Europa sailed back into Scheveningen. Ten thousand nautical miles, entirely under sail, with no engine to bail them out and no port to duck into if things went wrong. It remains, to this day, the longest nonstop voyage the ship has ever made - and likely ever will.
Why This Story Still Matters
Nobody signed up for this crossing looking for a record. There was no finish-line celebration planned, no trophy waiting in Scheveningen. It was nineteen people doing what needed to be done to get their ship - and each other - home safely, using nothing but seamanship, patience, and the wind.
That's kind of the whole spirit of tall ship sailing distilled into one voyage: resourcefulness, teamwork, and a genuine trust in the old ways of doing things when the modern world runs out of easy options. Europa didn't just survive 2020. She proved exactly why ships like her, and crews like that one, still matter.
A note on the video below: the footage of this incredible crossing was filmed by Richard Simko, who was part of the crew that made the voyage - he generously agreed to let us share it here. Huge thanks to him for documenting a piece of tall ship history, and for letting our readers see it for themselves.
If a story like this is why you're drawn to tall ship sailing, browse our Expedition and Training listings on Cruise Tall Ship - Bark Europa, and ships like her, are out there right now looking for their next crew.