Schooners & Sailboat Cruises - VT Statewide

Even landlubbers who rarely step from a dock onto the rocking hull of a boat generally know that a “schooner” refers to a vessel with masts and sails. What fewer people might realize is that the legendary Lake Champlain in northwestern Vermont is the home water of schooner captains who will take visitors on breathtaking cruises among the most brilliant blues and greens found anywhere on Earth. Long, meandering Lake Champlain is a very deep slash in the Earth surrounded by steep embankments topped by magnificent northern pine forests, its shores dotted with small marinas, towns, farms, and interesting houses. A cruise on a schooner or other sailing vessel takes visitors deep into this glorious corner of the planet. Some schooner or sailing cruises are scheduled to also enjoy sunset over the mountains of upstate New York to the west (even, occasionally, views of the Northern Lights).

Local captains can tell deep-history stories dated back to the sighting of the lake in 1609 by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. The lake has seen centuries of boating commerce and has served as a passage for armies and their equipment, especially during the Revolutionary War. Stories of shipwrecks are well-documented, and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Burlington, VT offer shipwreck cruises. (Champlain even has its own lake monster, described as looking like the head of a dinosaur emerging from the water. Nicknamed Champ or Champy, the creature inspired by name of the state’s baseball team, the Vermont Lake Monsters.) A sailing or schooner cruise of Lake Champlain brings visitors close-up to the crisp, mountainous beauty of northern New England, packed with stories of a legendary place of nature and human culture.