DESTINATION TRENDS
Climate change is already impacting on our sailing: there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that rising sea temperatures, sea levels and air temperatures have contributed to an increased frequency of severe hurricanes over the past 10 years. Since records began, 2016-2019 is the longest sequence of years which all featured at least one Category 5 hurricane.
Hurricanes Irma and Maria decimated cruising grounds and charter fleets in the BVIS, USVIS, and St Maarten, as well as causing thousands of deaths in 2017, and had a significant impact on where cruisers could be insured to over-winter.
But other factors are also changing where we sail. Jimmy Cornell has surveyed global patterns in sailing for 30 years.
“Figures obtained from 50 locations around the world seem to indicate that the popularity of long distance voyages may have peaked in 2010,” he explains. “The actual number of boats sailing from Europe to the Caribbean is in decline and so is the number of cruising boats transiting the Panama Canal. This observation is backed up by statistics from Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia.
“There are various reasons for this, but all seem related to safety concerns. Sailors are concerned about conditions having become less predictable, with tropical storm seasons lasting longer and safe seasons no longer a certainty.
“The world is also regarded as less safe on a personal level, not only in high risk areas such as the North Indian Ocean and Red Sea, Venezuela, Brazil, Honduras, and
East and West Africa, but also in parts of the Caribbean.
“One place where numbers have gone up is South Africa as the majority of boats on a world voyage now sail the Cape of Good Hope, with very few taking the risk of a passage through the North Indian Ocean and Red Sea.”
Climate change may also be contributing to the increased popularity of high latitude cruising.
“Significantly more sailors are attracted to high latitude destinations, especially in the North Atlantic,” explains Cornell.
The number of yachts voyaging to Spitsbergen increased from 55 in 2010 to 72 in 2019, whilst the number transiting the Northwest Passage doubled over the decade, from seven in 2010 to 14 this year.