The Orient Express Corinthian leaves Lisbon on Monday 12 October, bound for Barbados. Orient Express bills the 220-metre ship as the world’s largest sailing yacht, and the 14-night crossing, called Ocean Rebirth, is a wellness retreat created with Guerlain, with two days in the Azores and fares from 60,200 euros per suite, taxes included. Her three rigid sails, 1,500 square metres each, are set on carbon masts of about 69 metres that rise close to 100 metres above the waterline. The voyage was announced in July 2025. But it is the moment the first ship of Orient Express Sailing Yachts leaves the Mediterranean for a Caribbean winter, and the clearest picture yet of what a name made famous by trains wants to be at sea.
220 metres, 54 suites, 4,500 square metres of sail
The figures come from Orient Express and from her builder, Chantiers de l’Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire, where she was named on 29 April 2026. She is 220 metres long, 720 feet, with a beam of 25.2 metres, and Orient Express gives her weight as 15,000 tonnes. She carries 54 suites of 45 to 230 square metres on four decks, for a maximum of 110 guests, and about 170 crew, close to 1.5 crew members per guest. The sails are the idea. In the words of the naming release, she is “the first cruise ship equipped with the SolidSail wind propulsion system”, developed by the shipyard: three rigid sails on rotating, tilting carbon masts, which Orient Express describes as “fully automated and capable of delivering 100% wind-powered propulsion in favourable conditions”. In sea trials in February 2026 she made 12 knots under sail alone in 20 knots of wind. In lighter airs the sails work alongside a hybrid propulsion system running on liquefied natural gas, with electric motors and variable-pitch propellers. The details are on Orient Express’s naming page.
Fourteen nights with Guerlain
Ocean Rebirth is built around the days at sea. The ship leaves Lisbon at 19.00 on 12 October, spends two days at sea and reaches Ponta Delgada, on São Miguel in the Azores, at 11.00 on Thursday 15 October, leaving at 16.00 the next day. Then come eight days of open Atlantic before Bridgetown, at noon on Sunday 25 October; the voyage ends on Monday 26 October. Guerlain sends five experts. Amélie Demange is Guerlain’s international spa aesthetic creation director, and Déborah Passuti is a naturopath and nutrition and longevity specialist trained in the Buchinger Wilhelmi approach. Slav Marinov is presented by Orient Express as a six-time world champion in deep-tissue massage. Annabelle Deridder is an ambassador of Guerlain’s aesthetic and wellness know-how, and Charles Ferreux is a fitness coach whose dance career included the Béjart Ballet Lausanne. The fare includes private consultations, a massage, a spa treatment and more than ten group masterclasses, with menus by Yannick Alléno’s team and Passuti. In the Azores, guests lunch in a botanical garden, with dishes cooked in the island’s volcanic hot springs, and spend time in natural hot springs reserved for them. On board, Guerlain brings LongeviSkin, a device that combines seven aesthetic technologies, among them LED, plasma and radiofrequency. The crossing can also be booked in two parts: three nights from Lisbon to the Azores, from 16,500 euros per suite, or eleven nights from the Azores to Barbados, from 47,300 euros.
“Bringing Orient Express to the sea fits naturally within the imagination of this legendary brand: a journey rooted in discovery, unhurried time, excellence, and elegance.” Sébastien Bazin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Accor, at the naming in Saint-Nazaire, 29 April 2026.
Alléno’s table and a 500 sq m spa
Life on board follows the brand. Maxime d’Angeac, the architect and artistic director of Orient Express, designed the interiors. The restaurants are under the culinary direction of Yannick Alléno, executive chef of Orient Express Sailing Yachts and of the L’Orient Express train, and his signature table, La Table de l’Orient Express, sits beneath six-metre ceilings with glass by Emmanuel Barrois. The Guerlain spa covers 500 square metres, with four treatment suites, one of them a double suite for couples, a sauna and a fitness space. There is a 16.5-metre swimming lane, and a marina opens at the stern for water sports. Eight bars, among them an Art Deco speakeasy, share the ship with a 115-seat cabaret, a recording studio and a library of about 1,500 volumes. The six penthouse suites are on deck 7; two of them, Agatha Christie and Zephyr, have two bedrooms and a terrace with a jacuzzi. Some details have not been published. Orient Express has not said how much of the crossing will be sailed on wind alone, which depends on the weather, or whether the fare per suite covers two guests, and the October page now asks guests to call for availability.
From Saint-Nazaire to Saint-Barth
The crossing closes a first year that began on the Atlantic coast of France. The ship was floated out at Saint-Nazaire in June 2025, her masts were stepped in September and she was named on 29 April 2026, when the shipyard delivered her to Orient Express. In May she was due to anchor in the bay of Cannes for the 79th film festival. In June her itineraries ran from Marseille to Cannes, Saint-Tropez, Corsica, Lerici, Monte Carlo and Porto Cervo, waters our readers know from Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez. After the Atlantic, the Caribbean season begins on 26 October with Antilles Escape, three nights from Bridgetown to Martinique, Saint-Barthélemy and San Juan, from 15,900 euros per suite, and continues through the winter with voyages from Marigot, on Saint-Martin, to Saint-Barth, Anguilla and the Virgin Islands. The ship returns east on 13 March 2027, with the same Ocean Rebirth programme from Bridgetown to Lisbon. Her sister, Orient Express Olympian, was launched on 17 April 2026 and is due in spring 2027. On land, Orient Express runs La Dolce Vita train across Italy and La Minerva in Rome, and it has brought the name to Venice, in Palazzo Donà Giovannelli.
Why sail, and why cross
Two ideas meet on this voyage. The first is wind. The Corinthian is built to be pushed by her sails, and Orient Express credits the system with 9,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions avoided each year. The second is time. A crossing is the one voyage where the sea is the destination, with ten days at sea, and a wellness programme needs exactly that: no city to visit, no excursion to catch, a body to look after. Guerlain’s spa has been on board since the first season. Ocean Rebirth turns it into the reason for the voyage. How much of the Atlantic she sails on wind alone will depend on the weather, as Orient Express itself says. The rig, the programme and the season are ready.
The Luxury.it perspective
The word to keep from Orient Express’s own text is unhurried. The train made the time on board the reason to travel, and the Corinthian applies the same idea to the ocean: eight days without a port, a programme built on nutrition, movement and mindfulness, and a ship that, in the right wind, needs no engine. It will not suit everyone. Anyone who wants a new island every morning will prefer the Caribbean season, which starts the day the crossing ends. For the rest, the advice is practical. The three-night leg from Lisbon to the Azores is a short way to try the crossing, and the eastbound crossing of 13 March 2027 offers the same programme in spring. Orient Express has taken the most famous name in rail travel to sea, and a crossing of 14 nights is the most natural way to show what that means.
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