THE BOAT BEHIND THE CRUISE
The Traditional Dhow: Boat, Builders and How It Sails
A Musandam dhow cruise runs on a boat with centuries of Gulf trading history — what a dhow is, how it was traditionally built, and how it became a tourist boat.
See Musandam cruises on GetYourGuide ↗What 'dhow' actually means
'Dhow' isn't one design of boat — it's an umbrella term applied to the traditional wooden sailing vessels used across the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean for centuries. Within that broad family sit distinct regional types, from the large ocean-going boom to the smaller sambuk and jalibut, each shaped by the waters and cargo it was built for. The wooden boats used for Musandam cruises today are a coastal, tourism-adapted version of this tradition — built with the same hull shapes and joinery methods as their cargo-carrying ancestors, but fitted out with cushioned decks, sun canopies and, usually, a diesel engine rather than sail. It's a working design repurposed, not a replica built for show.
Built the old way, mostly by eye
Oman has one of the Gulf's strongest dhow-building traditions, centred historically on the port town of Sur, where master shipwrights constructed vessels without formal blueprints — measurements, curves and proportions carried in experience and passed down through generations rather than written down. Hulls were traditionally built plank-first, the outer shell shaped and fastened before the internal ribs were added, the reverse of most Western boatbuilding. Timber was often imported, historically teak shipped in from India's Malabar coast, since Oman's own arid landscape offered little suitable hardwood. A well-built wooden dhow could last decades with regular maintenance — recaulking seams, replacing worn planks — part of why some older boats still working the Musandam coast have been in service for a very long time.
From cargo and pearls to tourism
For centuries before tourism, dhows were the Gulf's working boats, riding the seasonal monsoon winds on long-distance trade routes to India and East Africa, carrying dates, dried fish, pearls and frankincense out and returning with timber, spices and textiles. Musandam's own economy, like much of coastal Oman, once leaned heavily on this trade and on pearling in the shallower Gulf waters closer to Khasab. The 20th century, and eventually container shipping and modern fishing boats, largely ended the dhow's role as serious cargo transport. Rather than disappearing, many boats and the skills to build them shifted toward fishing, and later toward tourism — how a design built for hauling dates and pearls across open water ended up carrying travellers between fjords instead.
Sail to diesel
Traditional dhows sailed under a distinctive triangular rig known as a lateen sail, angled to work efficiently with the seasonal monsoon winds that powered Gulf trade routes for centuries. Most working dhows, including the ones used for Musandam cruises, switched to diesel engines through the mid-20th century, trading dependence on wind and tide for a reliable schedule — useful when a cruise needs to reach Telegraph Island and back within a set day. A few tourist dhows still carry a mast or rig for atmosphere and photographs, but the engine below deck is what actually gets the boat through the khors and back to harbour on time. It's a practical trade-off: modern power inside a hull shape that's changed comparatively little in generations.
Life on deck
A tourist dhow's deck is built for lounging rather than crewing cargo: cushions and low carpets line the open deck under a shade canopy, usually with a shaded lower or forward section and open sides for the breeze and the view. Most of a cruise is spent here — sitting, swimming from the stern, or watching the cliffs pass — rather than doing anything nautical yourself. A small crew handles the boat, usually a captain who knows the khors from years on the water, since the fjords have no lane markings and some stretches run deep close to rock. Life jackets are standard kit for the swim stops, and most boats keep a covered area for shade, worth knowing if you burn easily on an open deck.