The Wylde Swan has returned to the Netherlands. The schooner, said to be the world’s largest topsail schooner, was completing an educational cruise of the Caribbean with 25 Dutch high school students, ages 14 to 17.

The plan was for the students to fly home from Cuba in March but with the outbreak of the pandemic, that became impossible. Instead of boarding airplanes, the decision was made to reprovision the ship and to sail it and the students across the Atlantic back to its base in Harlingen, in the Netherlands. So, the high school students, along with a professional crew of 12 and two teachers, set off on an almost 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) voyage onboard the 60-meter (200-foot) topsail schooner.  The Wylde Swan arrived in port today.  

The AP quotes 17-year-old Floor Hurkmans, on one of the biggest lessons of her impromptu adventure. “Being flexible, because everything is changing all the time,” she said as she set foot on dry land again. “The arrival time changed like 100 times. Being flexible is really important.”

The teens hugged and chanted each other’s names as they walked off the ship and into the arms of their families, who drove their cars alongside the yacht one by one to adhere to social distancing rules imposed to rein in the spread of the virus that forced the students into their long trip home.

The students will now have to adjust to the largely locked-down Netherlands after the close quarters of the schooner.

Wylde Swan built as a fast steamer in Germany in 1920. She served the German herring fleet, collecting herring at sea and transporting the fish to market. In 2010 she was converted to a two-masted topsail schooner, with worldwide certification as a sail training vessel.