Janet Jensen/The News Tribune

U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle motored to an advantageous spot near the starting line of the first leg of the Tall Ships Challenge.

Lynx, Amazing Grace, Lady Washington, and Adventuress were nearby, all with sails raised, all with captains working out their strategy.

On Eagle’s deck, crew and cadets stood ready to fill the sky with canvas.
The crew does not raise the main sails on a square-rigged ship. They lower most of them from the yardarms. Then, when they douse the sails, they climb the rigging up to the yards, and pull the sails on top of the yard by hand. That’s called furling the sails, and they do it on yardarms 30 to 140 feet above the deck.

“The strategy was to get a good start and to make the best speed we could as close to the wind as possible,” Capt. J. Christopher Sinnett said. “Another part of the strategy was to avoid a close quarters situation with any of the other tall ships.”

Eagle is a three-masted barque, and, at 295 feet, at least 100 feet longer than the other boats in the race.

“The cadets and crew had spent half an hour preparing for the race, so that when the command ‘Set all squares’ rang out, Eagle went from no canvas to 18,000 square feet in about 60 seconds,” Sinnett said. “The remaining 5,000 square feet were set a few moments later, as we approached the starting line.”

Janet Jensen/The News Tribune

The plan was to head for Port Angeles.
But the wind was southwesterly.

“We were unable to get closer than 55 degrees off the course we needed to make,” Sinnett said.
That means that two thirds of the way across the straits, Eagle needed to tack.

“When we did tack, we quickly learned why square riggers were replaced by schooners,” Sinnett said “ Square riggers can only sail 75 degrees to the true wind. So when we tacked, instead of heading to Port Angeles, we were heading back to Victoria.”

That’s about the time Eagle passed Lady Washington going in the opposite direction.

“Because it was going to take so much time to work our way to windward and get to Port Angeles, we made the decision to enjoy sailing on the breeze we had, and to not worry about the race,” Sinnett said. “When we got close to Vancouver Island, we doused sail and set ourselves up for an evening’s worth of training while staying clear of the commercial traffic lanes.”

Tuesday morning, Eagle will transit to Seattle, where she will anchor near the Coast Guard station Tuesday afternoon.

Janet Jensen and I are set up aboard Eagle.
I was tempted to say we are settled in, but this ship is so complex, that would be an overstatement.

Over the next few days, we aim to give you a taste of life aboard America’s Tall Ship.

That taste in the wardroom, the officers’ dining room, is pasta salad and sautéed broccoli. Lunch is early today, so everyone can be on deck for the sprint to Port Angeles, the first race of the Tall Ships Challenge.

The first thing you learn onboard is that you knock on every closed door you intend to open. The doors are watertight, and you open them with a lever that could crush the fingers of a person opening them on the other side. Already this year, one person has a case of flat fingers.

I’ll be rooming with Food Service Chief Leta Gibbons.

Remember the stories from Astoria, where the cadets aboard ate everything except the amaretto non-dairy creamer? They hate amaretto non-dairy creamer. They wondered who bought it, and why.

FSC Gibbons buys it. Why?

“Because they hate it,” she said.

She might be joking. She might not.

She has fitted out her bunk, the lower one, with a satin quilt and decorative pillows. I have the top rack, and have pledged to make it every day. I also have promised myself not to sit up suddenly in the night and slam into the metal beams. We each have a locker, and there’s a sink and a fold-out desk.

Each morning we will muster to the waist of the ship, the broad deck at the middle. Throughout the day, we will check in three times, so the officers will know we have not gone overboard. For safety drills, we will report to Lifeboat 3, starboard. We should not confuse lifeboats with the motor launches winched up to each side of the ship.

“The lifeboats are in the big white cans,” EMC Michael Barnhouse said.

We will be welcome on deck at any time, and we will be encouraged to pitch in and help with most any task.

“Anybody want to get on a line, get on a line,” Barnhouse said.

On Eagle, we’ll learn by doing.

USCG Barque Eagle was tearing from Victoria toward Port Angeles at 11 knots. That’s about 14 miles per hour in land terms, which just doesn’t capture the sense of speed on the sea.

The 60-by-30-foot American flag was beating in the wind, and being beaten up by the winds. It was time to replace the large national ensign with a smaller version.

The question: How to transfer it from the flag halyard attached to the mizzen boom, onto the deck and into safe storage in a good wind with respect and reverence?

And in the middle of the first race of the Tall Ships Challenge?

Eagle does not have 60 feet of unobstructed deck space.
It does, however, have the crucial resource
Bos’n Keith Raisch identified.

“Throw a lot of people at it,” he said.

The flag came down like a sail. Unlike a sail, it did not touch the deck. Instead, 18- and 19-year-old cadets gathered it up and toted it to the waist of the ship. Then they tried to sort it out.

Some held on to the edges. Some stood under it to keep it off the deck. Some worked on a plan.

They adjusted the jumble of fabric until they had the blue field of stars at one end and the stripes bundled at the other.
They negotiated the folds, backing under the deck to make room, until they could begin folding the stripes, triangle by triangle, until it was a perfect form of white stars on blue.

All told, it took them about half an hour to fold the ensign, and ace what might as well have been an exercise in a leadership course.

We’re about to see Eagle fly.

Photographer Janet Jensen and I will board U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle at 7:30 this morning for our transit home to Tacoma. We’ll be blogging to you from a day and a night at sea, two nights anchored in Elliott Bay off Seattle, and from the Parade of Sail into Commencement Bay. Eagle will be the final ship in the parade, which will be escorted by a Tacoma fire boat, and led by Lady Washington.

Today, the Tall Ships will race out on the first day of the Tall Ships Challenge, the race at the heart of all these festivals.
Vessels sail in classes based on size and class, and they set out with handicaps. We’ll tell you more about how that works as we learn it from Eagle’s crew today.

All the ships will raise their sails and set off from Ogden Point at noon, though they’ll be leaving Victoria Harbour between 10 and 10:30 a.m. It will be the first chance for people here to see all the ships under sail, thanks to the high and gusty winds that forced some ships, including Eagle, to motor into the festival.

The festival closed Sunday evening with a ceremony, a concert, and dozens of tired but happy vendors breaking down their booths and loading up their wares. The fleet was leaving. The fun was heading south.

Comment on this post to ask us what you’d like to know about Eagle and the officers, crew and cadets aboard her. Janet and I will get your answers, and show you the details and the big, majestic pictures to introduce you to America’s Tall Ship.