Vega Chief Mate Shares Why She Is On Vega

Vega Gamleby is our first operational sailing cargo ship and will soon begin her ~6,000 nautical mile voyage from the Netherlands to Colombia. 

There is a huge amount of excitement for this moment, on board, at our headquarters in Costa Rica and with our audience around the world. Only a few years ago Sailcargo was just the seed of an idea. Now, after much hard work and tremendous support, the construction of our flagship Ceiba is well underway, and we have our first operational cargo ship which will start generating revenue in 2023. 

In the last couple of years, our largest cargo client, Café William, helped raise our international profile. With the attention this gave us, we seized the momentum and found a ship that would allow us to start sailing cargo as soon as possible. We are grateful to have the support to act quickly. The purchase of Vega is an affirmation that zero emission shipping is a service in demand. Not just in the future, but today.

While Vega will carry less than Ceiba, every ton makes a difference and with more ships on the horizon we aim to show how valuable clean shipping really is. Investment into long term solutions that dissolve the carbon footprint of supply chains is an opportunity that no global importer should pass up. We are proud to partner with a company like Café William who prioritizes such investment.

According to the owner of Café William, Serge Picard, his company imports around 500 shipping containers of green coffee beans from around the world every year. With Ceiba and Vega both sailing coffee between Colombia and New Jersey, SAILCARGO will be able to sail approximately 100 container equivalents of coffee per year, and this is only the beginning. SAILCARGO´s long-term plan is to purchase more cargo sailing ships and build another Ceiba sized vessel in Costa Rica, with the aim to provide zero emission shipping on the scale equivalent to all of Café William’s imports and more.

It’s not just our clients that help us prove the value of clean shipping. It’s also the crew and everyone involved that makes this possible. We spoke with Nadja Nitschke, Chief Officer Unlimited World Wide and the First Mate of Vega.

Nadja Nitschke, Chief Officer Unlimited World Wide and the First Mate of Vega.

When did you first hear about Sailcargo and Vega?

I have known of Danielle for a long time, and when I heard about Sailcargo I wanted to see what was going on because I want to launch my own ship project for sail training (for young people) -you know, trying to make the world a better place, one ship at a time. 

As a professional sailor, what made you want to work for Sailcargo?

I found it very inspiring how Danielle created the company out of thin air, very much from her own inspiration and with a few good people and good connections she managed to manifest this. And with very little start up capital, and the good belief that this can be done. It's super inspiring,

I always told her, when it comes to the point where I can support you with the knowledge I have, I’m not a shipbuilder, I can't do woodwork, but when it comes to rigging and sailing I’ll be there, and I’ll support you. When the company acquired Vega, it was time to help her.

A lot of sailing ships are passenger vessels, as First Mate on sailing ships, what is the difference between cargo and passenger ships, and which do you prefer? 

It's more the ethical value that makes the difference when working on a sailing cargo ship. Everything creates awareness, from the start of sailing the ship with biofuel and under sail and taking select eco products directly from the region, paying fair prices to the farmers and then directly to the distributor that will supply it in the store. And I think that makes a big difference, to really create awareness in the consumer at the end. That brings a lot of joy, and I don’t even drink coffee!

You’ve been on Vega for a few months now, how does the ship look to you?

The ship looks very solid. I have not sailed on her yet, but from the weeks I’ve spent working on her, it's very solid, very stable and has everything you would need to report a professional operated sailing vessel. And then it’s about the crew. The future of Vega will work with a lot of local crew and also young crew, training people, and that always requires a lot of attention. There are a lot of people on the coast of the US who have experience on these types of vessels, which will make a perfect international blend with our team from around the world.

How long do you anticipate the delivery from the Netherlands to Colombia to take?

This is the first long voyage for Vega, so we are making a fairly conservative average to see how the ship performs. We are estimating 100 miles a day, that means when we are sailing from Canary Islands to Colombia that is 3,800 nautical miles give or take, which would mean more than a month's passage, however we think we can be faster. We know other ships of similar size can make a passage of two weeks, and then the same ship on a later crossing can take four weeks, so we’ll see, it all depends on the conditions. So we can say a minimum of 3 to 4 weeks since we will be getting used to how the vessel sails.

The Vega crew pull in one of the fore sails in Harlingen, Netherlands.

There is an engine on board. How does that affect the timing?

We will aim to use the engine as little as possible. We try to be in the spirit of SAILCARGO, only under sail. However, we agree to not spare the engine to avoid bad weather or for the safety of the crew and ship. When we leave Tenerife we cannot use the engine for the first 2 weeks if we want to ensure we can make it back to Tenerife in case there is an emergency, or until we make it to the halfway point where we could use the engine to get to the other side, again if there is a medical emergency or something.

Once you’re in Santa Marta, Colombia, what happens?

The coffee will be loaded in super sacks with some general size bags as well to maximize our cargo space. The bags will be moved around manually in the hold, but outside we will try to use our booms and other hoists as much as possible.

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Once in Colombia, Vega will load 80 tons of green coffee beans into her holds. The ship will then sail north through the Caribbean and the Atlantic to New Jersey, United States, just south of New York City. The crew hope to complete this north-south route five to eight times a year. This could mean an annual delivery of 640 tons of coffee for Vega alone. When Ceiba is also sailing, it will add 250 tons per trip. This raises the maximum estimation for both ships to 2,650 tons per year.

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One of the crew climbs the rigging of Vega. Vega has 14 sails, which are all set by hand depending on weather conditions.