QBE is a 30+-year-old small-group expeditionary learning initiative supported by a group of adventure enthusiasts who, decades ago, met at leading Swiss international school famous for its emphasis on experiential education.

Outdoor and cultural expeditions were mandatory for all students, and through the years, skiing, mountaineering, cycling, and sailing were the outdoor activities of choice.

So when a former expedition master came across two artisan-built pilot cutters on the market some years back, several of his former students launched a fund-raising campaign to help him make one of the school’s most transformative teen experiences available to a broader cohort of youngsters—but with the added benefit of head-turning classic yachts as his classrooms at sea.

Year after year, QBE has remained a tireless advocate for the exhilarating sport of sailing and a witness to the transformational outcomes that result from small-team expeditions to magical places.

Parents and students immediately notice that we operate as a family, not as some large matrixed company. We don’t do focus groups or bring in educational consultants to tell us how to do things. We just continue to embrace our founding principle that there’s no substitute for challenging students to accomplish ambitious goals while introducing them to the wonder of unfamiliar places, cultures, and tastes.

SMALL IS GOOD. VERY SMALL IS BETTER.

We’ve found it best to work with small groups of seven students per boat, teams small enough to bond over just two–three weeks. In fact, not only do our expeditioners acquire résumé-building teamwork and leadership skills, many form close, enduring friendships. That’s why we’re content to remain a “boutique” operation, necessarily sustained in large part by the financial and volunteer support of our patrons.

A much larger QBE, or a QBE using more common production-line boats, would struggle to deliver our unique expedition experience.

When it comes to nurturing emotional intelligence, challenging outdoor activities (like gaff-rig blue-water sailing), far removed from familiar surroundings, can be pixie dust, especially when participants are given the autonomy to make many of their own expedition decisions—when they’re in charge.

QBE crew members come to realize they are capable of doing things they never dreamed they’d have the opportunity or ability to do.

That new self-esteem in turn acts as a powerful catalyst for academic and career success. That’s why more and more schools are now including various expeditionary learning activities as part of their co-curricula. What was once considered an enrichment perk for private school students has now become a broad-based movement.

As for yachting, youngsters who previously never even thought about going sailing—or never had the chance— wind up loving it. In fact, many of our crew members want to come back and do it again. It so happens that several 2022 participants joined us again in 2023, and several 2023 expeditioners joined us again this past summer.

It’s satisfying for us to see how things sometime unfold: a summer sailing adventure ends up being an ignition switch for an unexpected new passion—one that doesn’t involve a smart phone or game console!

QBE is based in Saint-Malo, France, but the language of instruction is English. Of course, students who want to upgrade their French also have ample opportunity to improve their listening comprehension and idiomatic lexicon. And everybody gets to make friends from around the world.

—In 2023, we welcomed three international crews, including expeditioners from the UK, France, the United States, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Norway, Poland, Greece, Canada, Turkey, Switzerland, and New Zealand.