Northeast · St. Augustine
76-foot replica blockade-runner schooner sailing out of the City Marina in St. Augustine. Day sails, sunset sails, and moonlight sails. The city's longest-running tall-ship daysail.
Schooner Freedom Charters runs crewed daysails on Matanzas Bay out of the St. Augustine City Marina, in the shadow of the Bridge of Lions. It’s the city’s longest-running tall-ship daysail operation.
Freedom is an authentic replica of a 19th-century blockade runner, the fast schooners that slipped out of hidden Florida ports past the Union blockade during the Civil War. She’s a double-masted, gaff-rigged, topsail schooner (76 feet sparred, 64 on deck), built in steel with aluminum spars by the naval architect Merritt Walters and Rover Marine in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1982. John and Sarah bought her in 2000, spent a year refitting her, and launched her as a St. Augustine charter in 2001; she’s a Class B tall ship licensed for 41 passengers.
The schedule runs day sails, sunset sails, and moonlight sails: a two-hour sail into the same Matanzas inlet the historic runners used, with the oldest city in the country as the backdrop.
Trips are seasonal and weather-dependent, so booking ahead is wise.
