Barque · Japan
Kaiwo Maru II
A Japanese four-masted training barque launched in 1989, holder of a 1,394-mile record.
Technical data
- Rig
- Barque
- Flag
- Japan
- Home port
- Tokio
- Built
- 1984
- Shipyard
- Sumitomo Heavy Industries Uraga Shipyard
- Hull material
- Steel
- Length
- 110.1 m
- Beam
- 13.8 m
- Sail area
- 2,760 m²
- Sailing area
- Pacific Ocean
Launched on 7 March 1989 and commissioned on 16 September 1989 as a replacement for her predecessor Kaiwo Maru I, which is kept in Tokyo harbour as a stationary training ship.
She won the International Sail Training Association's Boston Teapot Trophy for the best 124-hour run under sail of the year in 1990, and again in 1991, 1994 and 1995, when she set the so-far unbroken record of 1,394 miles; by 2000 she had won it four times in all.
She took part in the Columbus quincentenary celebrations — OpSail 92 in New York and Sail Boston 1992 — in the 1997 Kagoshima to Osaka Tall Ships Race, in OpSail 2000 and in the Tall Ships 2000 Boston to Halifax race, which she won both in her own class A and overall.
In the autumn of 2004 a heavy typhoon drove her aground at the Japanese port of Toyama; the crew were rescued but the ship was badly damaged. She was later salvaged and taken to a shipyard for repairs in April 2005.
In 2010 she visited San Francisco to commemorate the 1860 voyage of the Kanrin Maru, the first Japanese ship to visit the United States officially.
The word Kaiwo means "sea king"; Maru is appended to most Japanese merchant vessels and is a term of endearment that also conveys the idea of endeavour.