Christian Radich is a Norwegian full-rigged ship, named after a Norwegian shipowner. The vessel was built at Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway, and was delivered on 17 June 1937. The owner was The Christian Radich Sail Training Foundation, which was established by a grant from an officer of that name.[1]
Christian Radich is a full-rigged, three-masted, steel hulled ship, long, with an overall length of, including the bowsprit and a beam of . It has a draught of approximately, and a displacement at full load of .
Her top speed under sail is 14knots,[2] and 10knots under power. The vessel is maintained by a crew of 18, and can accommodate 88 passengers.
The class society of the vessel is Det Norske Veritas, DNV, and is built to +1A1, E0.
The tall ship Christian Radich is well known through the international release of the 1958 Cinemiracle movie Windjammer. Christian Radich sailed to the United States in 1976 as part of the Bicentennial Celebration, and partook in the Operation Sail parade in New York Harbor on 4 July 1976. The ship also appeared in the 1970s BBC TV series The Onedin Line, as one of James Onedin's ships.[3]
The vessel was initially built to train sailors in the Norwegian merchant navy, and did so for many years. Since 1999, the ship has been on the charter market as well as sailing with paying trainees to foreign ports on summer trips, participating in the Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race, Operation Sail events, and large sail events in European ports. In 1980, the vessel won the OpSail 80 race from Boston, USA to Kristiansand, Norway, taking 17 days to do so. It was the first time a tall ship had beaten the racing yachts in both uncorrected and corrected time.
Christian Radich won the first race of the Tall Ships Race 2010 in Class A, from Antwerp to Skagen in Denmark, a distance of 787km (489miles) just under two days with an average speed of 10.2knots, with the corrected time of 1 day, 4 hours, 29 minutes, and 44 seconds, and won the overall race 2010, making this the ship's fifth victory in the Tall Ships Race.[4]