KARAKA

Update : March 1st, 2023

After crossing the Cape of Good Hope at the beginning of the year, we are now in Namibia in the port of Walvis Bay.

We will stay here until early May to wait for the delivery of our new sails and do some renovation and maintenance work on the boat before embarking on the transatlantic journey towards St Helena and Brazil.

We have available space to join us for the South Atlantic crossing between May and June 2023, as well as for the rest of our journey in South America for the remainder of 2023.

We plan to make our landing in Brazil in Salvador de Bahia, and then travel down the coast towards Rio, Buenos Aires, and Patagonia.

For more details about us, the boat, and our way of operating, the website is here for that, search in the menu for all the little hidden corners and goodies, we tried to make it as comprehensive as possible.

The details for contacting us and applying for a crew position are on the “Contact” page.

Karaka is a sailing ship that has been sailing as a co-op since 2004.

The boat itself is an old school steel ketch, big, tall, wide, heavy, black, gnarly, full of character. She was found abandoned in Hong Kong, bought for 1$, and has circumnavigated since with a crew of sea vagabonds.

But Karaka is not simply a ship, it is also a concept.

In an effort to share, learn and grow, we take as crew anybody motivated to join with an open mind, a willingness to become part of the team and a deep craving for this lifestyle.

The boat is operated as a non profit cooperative. We run on limited funds from crew contributions, and so we are more concerned with keeping the ship functional, strong and seaworthy, than in keeping her shiny and overloaded with gadgets.

The crew is usually composed of a healthy mix of nomadic wanderers and non-conforming individuals, regardless of nationality, age, gender, worldview, background, or financial status. Most anybody is welcome, attitude is what matters.

This makes being part of the crew something more than just a cheap sailing opportunity. What this is, really, is a chance to experience what being a feral sea gypsy on a nice ship is all about.

Somehow, because of our exotic alternative lifestyle and eclectic past crew, plus a reputation gained in our younger and wilder past, people sometimes get the impression we are a full-on hippy boat. We’re not.

We’re down to Earth, practical, no nonsense and responsible sea gypsies. We try to select crew with those attributes also.