Bluecruise: Caribbean, US East Coast, Greenland - long voyage in the name of longevity

At the beginning of 2025, Swiss longevity investor Dr Tobias Reichmuth set off for the Blue Zones of the world, those regions where people grow particularly old and happy. Reichmuth invites friends, scientists and business partners to accompany him on the BlueCruise. There is room for twelve guests on board. A Shaolin monk, a fashion designer from Switzerland and a clinic owner from Bulgaria have already cancelled.

Reichmuth bought the 45 metre long "Prometej", which was launched in 1956 as an icebreaker and which he had extensively converted, for the 18-month long voyage under the banner of longevity. What was important was a stable, seaworthy ship with a steel hull and a range of at least 4,500 nautical miles.

BOOTE EXCLUSIV spoke to Tobias Reichmuth at the beginning of September for an initial interim assessment.

What is the current position?

In Greenland. We have now passed Nuuk again and are slowly travelling south again.

Will the weather play ball?

Quite good. We had to weather a storm in Nuuk for a few days. It's also snowed for the first time now. And there are only one and a half metre waves from behind. That's not a problem.

What does the route planning look like?

We had to adapt them a little. The original plan was to do the Northwest Passage. But we had a problem with our fire alarm system, which kept giving false alarms from the Bahamas onwards. That was tedious because the crew always had to check everything. When we were in Halifax, we ordered all the parts, but they weren't available. Then we wanted to have them sent to Greenland. When we arrived there, already slightly late, we had to wait six days for a technician from the company to arrive. They really do fly in electricians because only they are authorised to do that.

And now?

We only just set off again on 8 August. And then the question arose as to whether we should go straight to the Northwest Passage. Or do we still want to see Greenland? Our captain, who had already travelled the passage four times, said that Greenland was much more beautiful and that we shouldn't miss it. And then we said we'd take our time for Greenland and head back to the Mediterranean. Then we'll see if we can go through the Suez Canal in the other direction.

What have been the highlights of the trip so far?

We saw so much. Greenland was absolutely fantastic. I've never experienced that before, these icebergs passing by and all that.

There were many highlights. Funnily enough, some of them had little to do with the ship. For example, we cycled from Boston to Halifax.

We really enjoyed the eight-day cycle tour. You can have so much fun even without a boat. And the Caribbean, of course. Mustique was beautiful, an island in the south. We climbed various volcanoes and anchored 80 metres from the Statue of Liberty in New York for four nights. That was fantastic too.

You have already visited Blue Zones. Are there any initial findings?

We've never been past so many Blue Zones. Not until Sardinia, actually. The most exciting thing in the context of longevity was Barbados, which is not officially a Blue Zone. But Barbados has a very high life expectancy, more than 82 years. That's just behind Switzerland and Japan. One of the best in the world. We took a closer look at why this is the case and saw two aspects: On the one hand, they start prevention very early. Everyone in Barbados can go to the doctor once a year for a free check-up. This means that potential problems and illnesses can be recognised at a very early stage so that we can react accordingly. And this is coupled with a strong social life. People are always on the street and dancing. It seems to work very well. Mind you, people drink quite a lot. Barbados has a strong rum culture, even one of the oldest rum factories in the world. You'd expect that not to be so good for longevity.

And how does life on board work?

We are lucky to have a very good chef. We really do longevity nutrition, everything is personalised. It tastes great and is super healthy. We also had quite a few different fellow travellers. Friends or people who applied via the website. I actually thought that was great too. Everyone who comes has to give a talk, so we learnt a lot about all sorts of topics and also did a lot of sport.

What surprises me a little is that sailing is sometimes boring. There's not much to do on a superyacht like this, the ship sails without us. Perhaps we should have bought a smaller ship so that we could do more ourselves.

It's great to have your food served, your bed made, the deck cleaned and so on. I've now started doing a watch once a day. Usually very early in the morning, when the sun comes up. That was particularly nice in Greenland. Just being a passenger, we're too active for that.

Is something else going differently than expected?

We need ten per cent less diesel than expected, so we are travelling quite efficiently. That's really cool. Apart from that, it was to be expected: you live closely with a crew. There's always friction from time to time. I'm more involved than just as a passenger and I'm also the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, constantly interacting with pretty much all employees.

Are so many guests still interested in coming along for a ride?

Yes, we are inundated with applications, but we can't take everyone. We don't have that much space. The ratio of people who apply and are accepted is not very high. That's why it's nice to be alone for a week again.

How is the dog doing on board?

Mostly good. It was great in the Caribbean with the warm sandy beaches and frolicking in the water. But it was often difficult to organise everything. In the beginning, we tried to officially introduce the dog to every country. But it all went far too slowly, as we were only on an island for three or four days on average. For example, we were told: Now you're coming from St Kitts to Nevis, take a health certificate from the previous island with you, as well as the import and export confirmation. In Barbados, we registered weeks in advance. Three weeks after we left, we received an initial response. We learnt that it didn't matter, we would just take the dog with us as it had all the vaccinations. But if you really wanted to do that with a ship - mission impossible. Unless you're planning to stay somewhere for two to three weeks. It works really well in the USA, by the way. Write an e-mail, give feedback and then you can go.

And most recently in Greenland?

We also registered him in Greenland because we knew it was important. We sent everything off and then we got confirmation: Yes, you can take Fritz with you. Then we landed in Nuuk on 1 August and the harbour master said: You can't take the dog here. We showed him the licence and he said he hadn't heard anything about that and we should leave the dog on the ship. Then the vet came and said, no, that's a mistake. He had agreed to it, but had forgotten that he still needed the Danish authorisation from Copenhagen. And I said: Yes, okay, how long will that take? We were told to call them and they said we would have to wait six weeks to get an answer. And then we said, guys, we're on the ship in Greenland now. How, illegally?

They said, no, you're not allowed to take the dog ashore. And certainly no further than the 66th parallel, because all dogs are strictly forbidden there, only huskies are allowed.

That was really difficult. Fritz wanted to get off the boat, as we had just travelled from Halifax to Greenland for six days. I then drove to the airport with the dog, flew to Copenhagen, hired a car and travelled to Switzerland by car. There I dropped the dog off at home and flew back to Greenland the next day to continue my journey by ship. Travelling with a dog on a ship is no trivial matter.