Three 52 minutes documentaries about the final days of working sail.
Neil Hollander sailed a ten-meter sailboat nearly 25,000 miles meeting and working alongside those men who still earned their livings using sailboats. This book recalls the authors' experiences with eight surviving craft, all representative of distinct cultures or geographic locations.
12 Mar 2008
Fifteen young sailors... six months of intense training... one chance at the brass ring. This documentary tells the story of a group of intrepid and determined young men and women, on the cusp of adulthood, as they embark on life's first great adventure. Racing a high-performance 52-foot sloop the crew of "Morning Light" matches wits and skills in a dramatic 2300 mile showdown.
06 May 1999
This award-winning PBS documentary sweeps viewers into a seafaring adventure with a community of Polynesians, as they build traditional sailing canoes, learn how to follow the stars across the open ocean, and embark upon a 2,000-mile voyage in the wake of their ancestors.
01 Jan 2008
Stories of maniac sailors, anarchist castaways, and the voyage of the S/V Pestilence: a video zine three friends and I made about finding a derelict sailboat, fixing it up, and sailing from Florida to Haiti.
01 Nov 2018
Using nature shots with narration and a musical score, this documentary tells the story about the Moken, Myanmar's last sea nomads.
01 Jan 1967
In 1967, a young David Lynch grabbed his new Bolex 16mm camera, to film his friend and mentor Bushnell Keeler and brother Dave Keeler sailing on the Chesapeake Bay in Bush's King's Cruiser. This was David Lynch's very first film, which he prefers to call a "home movie". It depicts a man, a painter, who changed David's life forever pursuing the artist's life, which he continues to this day.
10 Apr 1991
A documentary about Göran Schildt and his relationship with the Mediterranean.
18 Dec 2025
Shot over the course of 30 days at sea, filmmaker Alizé Jireh documents the group’s voyage across the North Atlantic—from moments of stillness and calm to the chaos of storms and setbacks. With an observational approach and an eye for the emotional and physical rhythms of life at sea, Jireh captures not just the external landscape, but the internal shifts that come with navigating the vast unknown.
Join this world-renowned personality for the most unique program on celestial ever. Teaches the theory and practice of Celestial Navigation and also teaches the noon shot. Using computer graphics, he illuminates the finer points of GP, GHA, and GMT. Worth twelve weeks of night school.
28 Feb 2018
A crew including a Writer, two Musicians, an Artist and a Stonemason embark on the Camino by sea, in a traditional boat that they built themselves on an inspiring, and dangerous, 2,500 km modern day Celtic odyssey all the way from Ireland to Northern Spain.
14 Dec 2022
Harald Reichenbach sets off around the globe in a sailing boat collecting garbage from the sea with local people. Using a press, he compresses what they find and pours it into resin to form ‚G-Cubes’. He then takes the garbage back as art to the people who created it – consumers in industrialized countries. Nothing on the journey goes exactly as planned, however, and Reichenbach finds himself teetering between art and activism.
04 Oct 2024
Drama documentary based on the latest discovery of a 16th Century sailing shipwreck found close to Malta by an underwater research team led by maritime archaeologist Timmy Gambin.
07 Sep 2024
AT SEA is a visceral and poetic short film that blends docu-style realism with narrative fiction, following a group of faceless sailors navigating the unpredictable seas of Greece. Through the fragmented memories of an unreliable narrator, the film weaves together a non-linear story that shifts in mood with each chapter, offering a fresh perspective on the sea. Based on true events… almost.
25 Jan 1995
Celebrates 30 years of televised specials by The National Geographic Society.
17 Oct 2021
The story of famous actor and director Orson Welles is told through his two visits to the Republic of Ireland; first in his youth as a promising young actor and finally in later years as a washed up icon of the silver screen.
15 Jun 2022
Under the Hull takes viewers behind the scenes as the Newport, Rhode Island based team lines up against the masters of the sport of offshore sailing – the French – in the build-up to the double-handed race across the Atlantic. From the building of a brand new, state-of-the-art 60-foot foiling race boat, to the physical, mental and onboard training, the film gives unrivaled insights into the highs and lows as the four sailors, supported by an international shore team, prepared their two entries – Mālama and Alaka’i – for the race of the year.
11 Feb 2014
Girt By Sea is a cinematic love letter to the coastline of Australia - a poetic celebration of our connection to the sea as documented through archival footage over the past 100 years.
26 Oct 1935
This short film showcases water sports activities such as sailboat racing and surfboard riding, including Christian Peterson doing a human surfboard at 45 mph.
21 Dec 1956
This Sportscope series entry highlights sailboat races in Holland.
01 Jan 1980
In April 1978, the annual Ensenada Yacht Race from Newport Beach, California, to Ensenada, Mexico, occurred over the course of twenty-four hours. More than 600 yachts and sailboats competed in the 200-mile race. In the final stretch into Ensenada Harbor, the winds calmed, leaving the boats moving slowly to the finish line.
01 Sep 1983
In hand-built, double-hulled canoes sixty feet long, the ancestors of today's Polynesians sailed vast distances using only the waves, the stars, and the flights of birds to navigate. Anthropologist Sanford Low visits the Caroline Islands of Micronesia to meet Mau Piailug, the last navigator initiated on his island and one of few men still practicing this once-essential art. He demonstrates his skill by sailing a replica canoe 2500 miles from Hawaii to Tahiti with no modern navigational instruments.