One of my all-time favorite blog article topics is Sailor fountain pens. Even before I bought Sailors of my own, I loved taking photos of Sailors and writing about what makes each one special and unique. Sailor's creative and unusual colors, and the inspiring stories behind each pen, just make me happy, so I always look forward to adding another chapter to my "So Many Sailors! Navigating the Colorful Waters of Sailor Pens" series. I started this saga back in March, 2022 (wow!), because I wanted to feature some of the older releases you may have missed over the past few years. So far, I've written five follow-up episodes, and this will be the sixth.
This installment coincides with an amazing opportunity that Sailor is offering for the fifth consecutive year, only for the month of September, 2025. All of the pens featured in the article are up to 40% off for Sailor North America’s “Don’t Miss The Boat” Sales Event, for the entire month. The retired Sailors we admired in my previous articles are included in the sale as well (if we have any left), and I will link to all Pen Boutique's sale Sailors so you can re-examine them and choose your favorites. Prices will go back to normal on October 1st, so, if you've been eyeing a Sailor, now is the perfect time to take the plunge. Hopefully I can help you choose! We don't know if a big Sailor sale like this will happen again.
Six More Sailors
For this installment of the saga, I decided to feature (top to bottom): Moonlight Over the Ocean, Smoothie Passion Fruit, Seasonal Festival Sasa, Sound of Rain Summer Rain, Pen of the Year 2024 (Celestial Gray), and Manyo Dianthus. I'll talk about why I love these six pens individually below, but first I just wanted to show you how pretty they are together in my pen tray in the late afternoon sunlight. Many pens can look very different depending on the lighting they are in, and I was delighted when I first saw a couple of these in the sun. Several actually have various degrees of sparkle, depending on lighting, but I'll talk more about that later!
Model Summary, Sale List, and Warning
It's been a year since my last "So Many Sailors...!" episode, so you might want to refresh your memory with a quick review of my Sailor Model Summary. If you're already a Sailor collector, you probably know, so feel free to skip this part, but to summarize Sailor's most popular models as simply as possible:
- 1911 Standard (1911S): mid-size torpedo-shaped pens with 14K gold nibs.
- 1911 Large (1911L): full-size torpedo shaped pens with 21K gold nibs.
- 1911 King of Pen: largest size torpedo shaped pens with extra large 21K gold nibs.
- Professional Gear Slim Mini: small flat ended pocket pens with 14K gold nibs.
- Professional Gear Slim: small flat ended pens with 14K gold nibs.
- Professional Gear (Pro Gear Standard): slightly longer and thicker flat-ended pens with 21K gold nibs.
- Professional Gear King of Pens: largest size flat ended pens, with extra large 21K gold nibs.
In addition to the body shape/size choices, you will also have a lot of nib choices with a Sailor. Not all pens come with every nib option, but the potential nibs are: Extra Fine, Fine, Medium Fine, Medium, Broad, Zoom, and Music. (The majestic King of Pens models are only available in Medium and Broad.)
For a very in-depth discussion of Sailor models and nibs, refer back to my article on Getting to Know Sailor Nibs from July, 2023. In that article, I compared the Professional Gear Slim Mini, Pro Gear Slim, Pro Gear Standard, Pro Gear King of Pens, 1911S, 1911L, 1911 King of Pens, and all possible sixteen nib sizes. Sailor makes all of their gold nibs in-house, something that is true for only a small number of fountain pen companies. They are famous for the quality and consistency of their nibs, and also for the distinctive feel of these nibs, which have a cult following among writers who love their precision and feedback.
Just be aware, we have very limited remaining stock of some of these discontinued designs, and can't order any more from Sailor, so, even though the pen may have originally come in a wider variety of nib choices, we may only have one or two left. If you see one you love that's still available, act quickly! Things move very fast during the month of September, and I actually already had to delete a number of pens from my initial list because they sold out in the first few days of September while I was finishing this article.
Below are lists of all the "Don't Miss the Boat" sale models that we still have right now. It's a lot of pens! I've put the ones that are new to the sale towards the top of each section.
1911 Standard and 1911 Large pens:
- Fried Egg Jellyfish 1911S
- Violet Jellyfish 1911S - featured in Part Five
- Ohwan Jellyfish 1911S
- Pen of the Year 2023 (Golden Olive) 1911S - featured in Part Five
- Loch Ness Monster 1911S - featured in Part One
- Key Lime: 1911S and 1911L - featured in Part Two
- Royal Tangerine 1911L - featured in Part Three
Professional Gear Slim Mini pens:
- Vert Sapin Professional Gear Slim Mini Rencontre #2
- Gris Fer Professional Gear Slim Mini Rencontre #1
- Bleu Ciel Professional Gear Slim Mini Rencontre #1 - featured in Part Five
Professional Gear Slim pens:
- LINE Friends Cony Professional Gear Slim
- Solar Term Tako Professional Gear Slim
- Solar Term Yuzuyu Professional Gear Slim
- Solar Term Hagi Professional Gear Slim
- Solar Term Fuki Professional Gear Slim
- Wagashi Sweets Nerikiri Professional Gear Slim
- Wagashi Sweets Tsukimi Dango Professional Gear Slim
- Wagashi Sweets Manju Professional Gear Slim
- Seasonal Festival Seri Professional Gear Slim (set with ink)
- Seasonal Festival Koi Professional Gear Slim (set with ink, or single)
- Seasonal Festival Sasa Professional Gear Slim (set with ink, or single) - featured in this article
- Seasonal Festival Kiku Professional Gear Slim (set with ink, or single) - featured in Part Five
- Sound of Rain Summer Rain Professional Gear Slim - featured in this article
- Sound of Rain Autumn Drizzle Professional Gear Slim - featured in Part Five
- Manyo #1 Dianthus Professional Gear Slim set with ink - featured in this article
- Manyo #1 Plum Professional Gear Slim set with ink
Professional Gear Standard Size pens:
- Tea Time #4 Afternoon Tea Three Tiers
- Tea time #2 Christmas Spice Tea
- Smoothie Wild Berry
- Smoothie Blue Moon
- Smoothie Ocean Water
- Smoothie Passion Fruit - featured in this article
- Smoothie Cantaloupe
- Gin Cocktail Series (2022 edition) Professional Gear five-pen set
Professional Gear Multiple Size Variation pens (sizes not listed are sold out):
- Winter Sky: slim and standard
- Pen of the Year 2024 (Celestial Gray): slim and standard - featured in this article
- Moonlight Over the Ocean Professional Gear: standard and King of Pen - featured in this article
- Pen of the Year 2022 (Soda Pop Blue) Professional Gear: slim - featured in Part Four
- Pillow Book - Autumn Sky Professional Gear: slim and standard - featured in Part Two
- Storm Over The Ocean Professional Gear: King of Pen - featured in Part Four
- Sunset Over the Ocean Professional Gear: slim and standard - featured in Part One
- Too Hot Habanero Professional Gear: standard - featured in Part Two
Whew! Please note that as the month goes on, many of these will sell out, so some items on the lists will become invalid.
Moonlight Over the Ocean
I decided to jump right in with the biggest and boldest pen first: Moonlight Over the Ocean, which I have chosen to photograph in King of Pen size, although we also have Standard size available. If you have been wanting a King of Pen, this is a rare opportunity to purchase one at a huge discount... and what a pen!
Moonlight over the Ocean, or Umi to Gekko ("oo-mi toh geh-koh"), is inspired by "the serene feeling of a seaside evening spent watching the moonlight-kissed ocean." The body, grip section, and top finial are an unusual sunset orange, a rich caramel shade infused with metashine, a dust-fine shimmer within the resin that catches the light. The material is very slightly translucent, so it holds onto the light and appears illuminated from within, like the ocean bathed in the fading glow of a beautiful sunset at the end of a languid day. The deep yellow cap and bottom finial represent the moon, low on the horizon, huge and yellow as its light is filtered through Earth's atmosphere. The yellow parts are also translucent, but without metashine, and two materials perfectly embody the contrast between the steadily shining moon and shimmering ocean.
This is a stunning pen, but it was writing with the King of Pen nib on the one I brought home that really pushed my craving over the top. It's precise but luxuriously smooth, with just enough feedback to feel the page. The huge 21K gold nib glides over the paper, flexing slightly at my command and producing delectable shading as my ink pools on the downstroke. I always thought the King of Pen was too large for my medium-sized woman's hand, but it's not overly heavy, and is actually very comfortable and well balanced for me. For someone with large hands, the King of Pen size is ideal. What a pen! Once I started writing with it, it was a little hard to stop.
Moonlight Over the Ocean originally came in Professional Gear Slim, Standard, and King of Pen, but the Slim size is sold out now. We still have some King of Pen and Standard pens left, although nib sizes are limited. This color combination is not for everyone, but for lovers of warm yellow, orange, and brownish tones, it is truly a spectacular pen whose calm, feel-good colors evoke good vibes with a nostalgic feel that reminds me of the 1970s.
Passion Fruit Smoothie
I guess I was in a tropical mood when I chose the pens for this article, because the Passion Fruit colorway in the Smoothie line really spoke to me. The Smoothie series, which was announced in early 2024, is a healthier successor to Sailor's celebrated Cocktail series, and features Professional Gear Standard size pens equipped with Sailor's world-famous 21K solid gold nib, in Fine, Medium Fine, and Medium. Some of Sailor's ideas for smoothie flavors are pretty wild (Ocean Water Smoothie, anyone?!), but the colors are all soft and lovely pastel shades infused with a slightly icy-looking metashine, like those frozen concoctions that help us hang on. (Wait a second... I might be steering the boat a little off course here....)
Passion fruit are actually one of my all-time favorite fruits, and I think Sailor captured the color of the yellow variety perfectly with this pen. You may be most familiar with purplish passion fruit, but they can be yellow, orange, purple, or green, with delicious tart pulp and lots of seeds. I used to get yellow passion fruit (known as liliko'i in Hawaii) at the Keauhou Farmers' Market, and popsicles, cheesecake, juices, and, of course, smoothies, made from the fragrant scooped-out insides drove me wild. Below is my photo from a very successful market day! Nice match, Sailor!
The Smoothie series pens are Overseas Exclusives (outside Japan only), and available only in limited quantities. Wild Berry, Blue Moon, and Ocean Water have chrome-plated trim with solid 21K gold rhodium-plated nibs, while Passion Fruit and Cantaloupe feature gold-plated trim with solid 21K sold nibs. There is also a second, newer series of Smoothie pens (Watermelon, Acai Berry, Blue Milkshake, and Goldenberry) with different pricing. (Only the first series is part of the sales event.)
They are all extremely pretty, but my two favorites are Passion Fruit and Cantaloupe, with their joyful soft yellow and melon colors paired with the gold trim. The Passion Fruit, especially, just feels like a ray of gentle sunshine that drives your cares away. The color yellow isn't even usually one of my favorites, but this pen makes me feel like I'm holding a soft smile in my hand. I love how the yellow is paired with a creamy white cap and grip section, like the delectable froth at the top of the smoothie. The two-tone look really makes this pen special, as does the subtle metashine throughout. It's not an in-your-face sparkly pen, but the shimmer adds to the feeling of lightness and effervescence. The shade of gold used in the gold-plated trim is also very deliberate and nice. It's a cool-toned gold rather than a rich yellow gold, matching the resin's cool-toned yellow and frosty cream shades.
I paired the Passion Fruit Smoothie with Murasaki-shikibu from Iroshizuku because the color reminds me of a passion fruit flower! The precise Fine nib on this pen felt so satisfying to write with and I love the look and feel of this pen and ink together. Once again, I'm finding it difficult to resist penabling myself while writing one of these "So Many Sailors...!" articles!
Sasa
Sasa, a soft aqua blue Professional Gear Slim, is part of Sailor's Seasonal Festival series, which was designed in honor of Japan's five traditional celebrations that take place each year. I love the cheerful color of this pen. It just makes me smile.
The five pens in the series are available both in elegant limited edition sets with a matching ink bottle from the Sailor Shikiori line, and also as individual pens in standard hinged blue Sailor boxes. They all have gold trim, very subtle shimmer, and a 14K gold nib in Fine, Medium Fine, or Medium. Kiku, the pretty coral colored pen I featured last year, is another favorite of mine from this series, but they are all lovely! (The Kiku gift set is pictured below.)
The Seasonal Festival series consists of: 1) Seri (January 7th), "designed in a gentle green to represent the Jinjitsu Festival, which focuses on good health in the coming year," 2) Momo (March 3rd), "a pastel pink to go along with the Joshi Festival that celebrates good health and growth of girls, 3) Koi (May 5th), a deep gray blue, evoking the "Tango Festival, which celebrates the good health and growth of boys," 4) Sasa (July 7th), a brighter teal pastel pen which "represents the Tanabata Festival, that centers on wishing for dreams to come true," and, finally, 5) Kiku (September 9th), for "the Choyo Festival—a celebration of long life."
I'm not sure I would call Sasa "teal," but that's okay! It's a beautiful summery color. The Tanabata Festival, also known as the Star Festival, was introduced to Japan from China by the Empress Kōken in 755, and it celebrates two star-crossed lovers from folklore. In modern-day Japan, Tanabata celebrants write wishes, sometimes in the form of poetry, on colorful strips of paper, and hang them on bamboo with other paper ornaments and streamers. These are traditionally set afloat on a river or burned to draw the festival to its conclusion, symbolizing the wishes being sent to the heavens. I love this idea! It reminds me of Yoko Ono's Wish Tree in the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. It would be cool to have a Wish Tree at Pen Boutique, where people could write their wishes--in fountain pen, of course--and set them free to inspire others.
The Sasa set is paired with Shikiori Tokiwa-matsu ink, a soft olive green, but I decided to match mine with Koke from the Manyo line instead. Koke is one of Sailor's intriguing dual-shading inks, and feels appropriately dreamy for this hopeful little pen.
Summer Rain
This year, the Autumnal Equinox falls on September 22nd, and that means that it's still technically summer as I write. The weather is in a state of transition, fluctuating between hot and cooler, and, two of the days that I was home working on this article, my afternoon was punctuated by the rumble of thunder and the refreshing sound of summer rain.
Sailor's Sound of Rain collection, announced in June, 2021, features four lovely Professional Gear Slim size pens designed to evoke "the peace and grace of rain with the gentle matte colors of every season." Spring Rain (a delicate pale green) and Winter Rain (a light pinky mauve) are translucent, while Autumn Drizzle (a sophisticated cool-toned violet mauve) and Summer Rain (an intriguing dusky teal) are opaque.
All four pens have a matte barrel, cap, and grip section, and feature gently shimmering transparent end finials in a delicately complementary color. The top and bottom finials evoke raindrops suspended at each end of the pen, and make the center of the pen appear as if it is floating. I love the colors Sailor selected for each pen's end finials. They are all unusual and lovely, but Summer Rain's beautiful jewel-like teal enraptures me every time I look at this pen. It has a brilliance that's very difficult to capture in a photo, with hints of both emerald green and aqua blue.
When I first wrote with a Sound of Rain pen, I noticed right away that the nib felt extra nice, then realized that this series' nibs are 21K gold, even though they are the Professional Gear Slim size, which traditionally have 14K nibs. This was a first for Sailor! The nibs are extremely beautiful, with a striking bi-color plating. They are available only with a Medium Fine nib size, but, to me, that is the ideal nib size in a Sailor. I love the smaller Professional Gear Slim size, which is more compact and quite similar in size to the Pelikan M200 and M400 series, two of my other favorites, so having the softer 21K nib in this size is very special.
The Sound of Rain pens are made to pair with Sailor's fascinating Sound of Rain ink series, whose colors are all named with onomatopoeia words that sound like the rain they depict. Zaza, in particular, is inspired by summer rain, "that is the sound of rushing water resembling rain falling on green leaves of plants and trees, the glossy drops and lush green leaves." Zaza is an excellent match for this pen, but I decided to think outside the box and pair Summer Rain with two different inks: Sailor Shikiori Yama-dori and Iroshizuku Ku-jaku. Yama-dori matches the pen's barrel, and Ku-jaku captures its end finials.
Everything about this pen is special: its nib, its finials, its unusual ring, and the quiet smoothness of its matte finish resin. I love that the matte finish has a warmer and grippier feel in the hand, and doesn't show fingerprints. There is a calming soft-focus look to the pen, like the view through a rainy window, or the relief of a cloudy sky's arrival on a bright, glaring summer day. Sailor has captured the feeling of peace that the sound of summer rain brings.
Celestial Gray
When Sailor's Pen of the Year was announced in April, 2024, Sailor told us, "This year we draw inspiration from the infinite beauty of the night sky and we have crafted an homage to the stars above." Celestial Gray features a beautiful semi-transparent dark charcoal gray body sprinkled with copious silver sparkles, like stars in a peaceful sky far, far away from noise and light pollution.
The shiny rhodium-plated nib and matching chrome-plated trim complement the silver of the "stars," producing a very glamorous-looking functional keepsake to help you commemorate the year 2024, with a special engraving on the cap ring to remind you of a year you may want to hold onto.
What memories do you associate with 2024? Meeting someone who became special to you? Welcoming a new family member? A graduation, job, new adventure, or other life transition that is important to you? Maybe it's something only you know about. You may have made a discovery about yourself that you haven't shared with others yet, but 2024 revealed it to you.
The pen in my photos is a Professional Gear Slim, but Celestial Gray is also available in the Pro Gear Standard size, if you prefer a larger pen and a 21K gold nib. Nib sizes are EF, F, MF, M and B, but we have very limited stock remaining. If you see the nib size you want, snag it! There is probably only one left.
Celestial Gray is a North American Exclusive pen, available only through Authorized Sailor Pen North American Retailers. I apologize for my ink pairing. We actually don't have this ink in stock, and I wouldn't recommend putting it in this pen unless you have a broad nib... but humor me. Colorverse Project Shiny Black is one of the few shimmer inks I adore, and it's a perfect match for this pen. Put it in your wishlist, if you haven't already, and let the light of Sailor's Celestial Gray Pro Gear glimmer through the darkness to bring some mystery, peace, and wonder to your night or day.
Dianthus
My final selection for this year's "So Many Sailors..." article is another one of Sailor's delightfully strange color names, like last year's blue "Moss" Pro Gear. Although Dianthus flowers are also known as "pinks," almost all species of the flower are pink, and the color pink may even be named after the flower, Sailor's Dianthus pen is lavender!
Just to confirm we are definitely talking about the same flower, the stylized dianthus depicted on this pen's exclusive finial shows the characteristic five petals with their frilled edge, origin of the verb "to pink," which means to cut a zig zagged edge on. (You may be familiar with "pinking shears," special scissors used to cut a zigzagged decorative edge on cloth to discourage it from fraying.) This is such a cool detail, and I love the way the embossed foil flower catches the light as the pen moves in my hand.
Sailor has released three collections of Special Edition Sailor Manyo pens, each inspired by Sailor's famous Manyo inks, which take their colors from nature as depicted in the Man'yōshū (万葉集, literally "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves"), the oldest collection of Japanese waka (classical poetry) surviving to the present day. The poetry anthology was compiled sometime after AD 759, and contains over 4,500 poems written between AD 600 and AD 759. This highly revered poetry collection has even inspired botanical gardens, known as Man'yō shokubutsu-en (万葉植物園), in which gardeners attempt to include every plant variety and species mentioned in the anthology.
Each of Sailor's Special Edition Manyo pens comes in a lovely boxed set paired with Manyo ink. Dianthus, part of the first collection, is paired with Manyo Nadeshiko, a color inspired by Dianthus superbus, a frilled pink to lavender dianthus native to Europe and northern Asia.
Although the soft purple-blue ink is beautiful, I decided to pair the Dianthus pen with a color that I think matches the Dianthus flowers growing in my yard, Sailor Ink Studio 831. I love this pen and ink together!
Dianthus is a Professional Gear Slim sized pen featuring a F, MF, or M 14K gold rhodium-plated nib and matching chrome-plated trim, with end finials and grip section in a soft transparent taupe, a lovely pairing with the elusive delicate bluish purple shade of the pen. This pen is such an intriguing color, with such a fascinating story, and, like the others in this article, it has a calming and uplifting effect on me when I look down at it in my hand or on my desk.
What are your favorite Sailor pen/ink pairings? And which pen in the "Don't Miss the Boat" sales event appeals to you most? For me, this year, I think it's Passion Fruit Smoothie, but there are definitely a lot of beautiful choices that suit a very broad range of Sailor pen lovers! Be sure to check out the rest of the choices, think about which nib size you most want to add to your collection, and "do not miss the boat." If you don't own a Sailor yet and have been wanting to see what makes Sailor fans so loyal, now is the time to find out.
-Laura P.
