Tall Ships

Nine tall ships (at least I think it was nine) sailed into the harbor on Thursday during the parade of entry for the tall ship festival.  Because 250,000 people were out and about to see their arrival, and for good reason, because the ships are so wonderful and magestic, I opted not to get up close.  Rather than heading into the crowd, we drove down to the secret beach, where there were hardly any people.  The kidlets scrambled around on the rocks.  Mr. SP and YaYa swam out to the big rock to look from there, and we enjoyed having lots of space on the beach and seeing the ships.  The sun was bright and it was warm on the beach.  Dr. Peds thought it was too bright and too warm, but I  was too busy watching the ships through the binoculars to care.  Every time they come, which is not every year, I am just so enamored of the complexity of all those sails and ropes.  They are like a living and breathing history museum, and I love history.

Because of the weather and the crowds, we didn’t go down to the festival all weekend to hop on one of the ships, and we didn’t have tickets to go sailing (although that would be a super fun thing to do someday, maybe without kids . . . ).  However, I had read that the ships were gathering outside the canal late this morning to race across the Lake as part of the Tall Ships Challenge, where the ships race from port to port.  YaYa was at art camp, but I gathered up the rest of the kidlets and we drove down to the rose garden and then walked along the lakewalk toward the bridge, watching the tall ships emerge into the lake.  There were still lots of people out today, but it was much more manageable to navigate.

Only one of the ships left under sail as it came through the canal, and we saw that one from a distance, but we did make it all the way to the canal to see three ships pass right by us, up close and personal.  First we saw the Privateer Lynx, a replica of a ship involved in the War of 1812 (actually several of the ships were replicas of vessels used in the War of 1812).  The Lynx didn’t have it’s sails up, but it fire off two canon blasts as it went under the bridge, to the rapt delight of Mr. SP and the abject horror of Mr. TOF.  Mr. SP was reluctant about the walk down to see the ships, but the canon made up for any hesitation he had, and he was sold on the experience after that.  Mr. TOF hasn’t stopped talking about the big boat with the big boom all day.  It made an impression on him, and he’s quick to tell you it was scary.

The last ship we saw up close at the canal was the Pride of Baltimore II, which has been here a couple of times before, and is always one of my very favorites.  I just think it is an especially beautiful boat, and I love how it looks under sail.  It always makes me think of the Mayflower.  I can’t even imagine how crazy it must have been to travel straight across the ocean to a mostly unknown land in a ship like that.  The Pride of Baltimore II doesn’t actually have anything to do with the Mayflower, though.  Experiencing it makes me appreciate the time in history when this kind of ship accounted for oversea travel.

As the boats gathered in the water off the beach, they let out their sails and started to sail away.  We watched them while we ate a picnic lunch.  The breeze was pretty gentle, so they weren’t going super fast at that time.  Later, when we picked up YaYa from art camp we could just see the tips of their sails far off on the lake.