Who in Europe is the greatest sailor nation ? Can we assume Greeks are, because they have hundreds islands ?

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emiliosailez

Depends on what kind of sailing you are referring to. As far as the merchant marine business goes, the Greeks do own more tonnage than any other nation and have had it for some time. In terms of recreation sailing goes I am not sure what you are asking as the "greatest".
As a sport, it is expensive and in recent years the Greeks are doing better. Now, there are roughly 17.000 sailboats in the Greek seas (not necessarily owned by Greeks) in August. Even Florida where I live cannot compare to that.
Personally, I have found the British to be excellent in seamanship and courtesy in the seas. And the Dutch are good as well. But so are the Scandinavians and the Italians do own the best sailboats on earth.

Sherifa_Haifa

Aaron i must to admire that you have humor.Anyway here you go:http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Greek%20sailors

Daforce

Greece might have a lot of island, however its pretty safe waters. Scandinavia (denmark, norway and sweden), Scotland, Ireland today would be great sailor nations as their water in no way is safe water.

Throughout history England traditionally had the biggest navy in the world, with the exception of a short period where Denmark had, however their allied England couldn't accept this and sailed to Copenhagen claiming to come in peace, ending up destroying Denmark and their entire navy.

Back before those days scandinavians and the vikings were also know to be great sailors, discovering America way before columbus and such (was proven a few years back)m they never settled down there though.

unknown

greece correct,

LockG

dont forget the portuguese they kickstarted the age of exploration

Linktothepast83

"According to the BTS, the Greek-owned maritime fleet is today the largest in the world, with 3,079 vessels accounting for 18% of the world's fleet capacity (making it the largest of any other country) with a total dwt of 141,931 thousand (142 million dwt).[39] In terms of ship categories, Greece ranks first in both tankers and dry bulk carriers, fourth in the number of containers, and fourth in other ships."

From wiki for maritime fleet. But if we speak about war fleet we are further behind.

DavidL

I'd settle for the British, since large parts of their territory still lie overseas. Plus of course their history as a sailing nation.

I am from AegaeN MacedoniA

you are funny:) No it's Albania:)

HeterÃ³nimo

Portugal without any chance to any other.

In 1530 there were portuguese ships in Africa, Brazil, India, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan.

The portuguese were the first europeans in most of Africa, Brazil, the first to sail to India and China, were the first ever europeans in Indonesia, Malaysia, every island in the Indian Ocean, and the first europeans to arrive to Japan and Korea.

Tony C

Checkout the sailing results from the last Olympics. Britain swept the board (again).

Karl der Frei

ehhh which r the criteria for claiming somebody's a good sailor?depends..the truth is that greece ranks no.1 in ship ownings (the ones who're sailing under the flag of greece) not analogically but in real numbers so considering the fact that it's low populated in comparison to others then this makes them probably...good sailors :-P french and brits must be quite good too personally i would add as good havin a good navy the dutch germans n belgians coz they ve got the three biggest ports in europe (rotterdam,hamburg,antwerp)

ol' dirty bingo caller!

theres been many...
England, Spain, Denmark used to be

citizenx319

Greece ... Hellas ... Greco.

T.T.K.

Norway

Acoreana83

the greeks have pretty much spanned the globe since ancient times. it has nothing to do with them having many islands or who owns which colonies overseas. it has to do with who discovered what and who settled those places. many places that britian has (for example) they did not discover. they just came to those places much later for profit. the spanish, portuguese, greeks, scandinavians and french hold the top spots for sailor nations throughout history (europe).

Farnic

Top three places: Greeks, British and Norwegians.

Next tier: Japanese, Spaniards, French and Argentinians.

Good mariners are also Tunisians and Portuguese.

In terms of military navy: US win all classes by far, then come UK and France, and close come Russia.

Good sailors -but not bragging about it -are Israelis, Danes and the Dutch.

friendly and funny Fyromian :))

fyromians, of course!!!

THESSALONIKI IS NOT GREEK

Even Somalians are better sailors than Greeks

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