Hundreds gathered on the docks of the Thea Foss Waterway to bid farewell to the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle, the 266-foot three-masted barque that became the centerpiece attraction of Tall Ships Tacoma 2008.

As the ship pulled away, festival attendees clapped and waved good-bye. Several coasties aboard waved back.

“It was so amazing to see that ship,” Puyallup’s Lana Daniels said. “I’ll miss it. Let’s just hope it’s back next time around.”

The crew of the HMCA Oriole has a different mission during Tall Ships Tacoma 2008.

“We’re part of the Canadian Navy,” Master Seaman Don Read explained, “so we’re here for public relations. We don’t do the sailings because we’re funded by the government. So we can spend as much time as possible with people who want to board.”

The 102-foot marconi-rigged ketch played host to thousands of visitors and a host of events, Read said. About 1,850 people boarded the ship on Sunday, and about 1,500 toured it Saturday.

And the response from the community has been overwhelming, Read said.

“We were told from Day 1 that the city wants to make this the best shop on the Tall Ships circuit,” he said, “and we’ve had so much support here from volunteers taking our laundry in the morning and returning it in the evening. Anything we needed we had in an hour. Transportation was provided; they went everywhere and anywhere we wanted to go.”

I’m asking an array of people if they thought this year’s festival was a success.

First up was Tom Cashman, the executive director of the Foss Waterway Seaport. The organization’s museum was free during the event, and it saw record attendance: more than 15,000 people on Friday, about 10,000 each on Saturday and Sunday and likely a little less today.

“Clearly, the scale of this is tremendous,” Cashman said. “We’re extremely, extremely happy.”

The crowds are lighter. The lines are shorter. And the sun is shining.

This is the day to be at Tall Ships

From Rod Koon, the directior of communications at the Port of Tacoma and a Tall Ships volunteer:

An ode to Tall Ships® Volunteers
Sung to the tune: Pay Me My Money Down

We need lots of folks to lend a hand
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round
To make a Fest that will be grand
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round

They last came here in 2005
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round
And they made our city really come alive
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round

CHORUS
Tall Ships, Tall Ships, Tall Ships are coming 'round
They're gonna shine a bright light on T-Town
Tall Ships are coming 'round

Young folks, old folks, babies too
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round
Will come down to the Foss to get a closer view
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round
We'll have great music and real fine food
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round
It might just put you in a Pirate Mood
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round

CHORUS

It's a huge event, that fact is clear
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round
So we hope you'll take the time to volunteer
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round

It will make you smile, it will make you grin
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round
The day our ships come sailin' in
Tall Ships are Coming 'Round

CHORUS

Well, now that the sun is out, the ships are leaving - but you still have one more day to enjoy Tall Ships Tacoma 2008. The News Tribune crew will be seeing off the Eagle, which is pulling out in early afternoon, and pulling together an initial post mortem on the event.

If you attended the festival, we'd love to hear from you about your experiences. What were your favorite parts? What could have festival organizer done better? Should Tacoma try to host another festival in the future?

Comment here or send an e-mail to newstips@thenewstribune.com.

If you can find a more senior member than Elenore Kaiser on any Tall Ships crew, she would like to meet that person.

Kaiser is the Nina’s cook, and she runs the ship’s gift shop. She is a proud 81.

You might have bought your $5 commemorative pin from her, or your $20 Nina hat. If you did, she likely introduced herself to you as Miss Elli, the first mate’s mom.

She figures he saved her life.

“Ten years ago, my husband passed away, very suddenly,” she said. “We had been married 46 years, and he had a heart attack. I was completely lost.”

Her volunteer job as a church secretary was not enough to bring her back to her moorings.

“My kids decided I needed something to do,” she said. “Bless their hearts, it was the best thing they have ever done for me.”

Capt. Morgan Sanger was redecking Nina, the grim little replica of Columbus’ favorite ship. It is literally, pitch black, inside and out. It is allergic to even the smallest of comforts. Morgan wants visitors to leave it giving thanks for how cushy their lives are in comparison.

Miss Elli gets a kick out of the fact that Sanger goes by Captain Morgan. “Like the spiced rum,” she said.

During that re-fit eight years ago, Nina’s first mate, Jeffrey “Doc” Kaiser, called his mom and asked if she would take the train from her home in Almagordo, N.M., to Florida to help with the cooking, washing, shopping and errands.

“They thought it would take a month to six weeks,” she said. “That six weeks has become eight seasons. I have my own bunk. The captain says that when Miss Elli comes back, she gets that bunk no matter what.”

It would be charitable to say that, below-decks, Nina is cramped. Miss Elli is petite, which is why she does not bump her head on the low, dark, timbers.

“It’s cozy,” she said. “But she bobs like a cork. We had a bad storm coming down. I cracked a rib or two when I got knocked out of my bunk.”

She’s fine now, she said, and she’s fallen in love.

“It used to be that Chicago and Detroit were the best ports. Tacoma has surpassed it all,” she said. “If we say we need ice, it’s here in half an hour. They sent over boxes of vegetables yesterday, and fruit the day before. The attitude is so much better here than anywhere else.”

Thank you, Miss Elli. Come back any time, with or without your grim, beloved Nina.
.

By Kathleen Merryman
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com

Last Wednesday, I posted this on our Tall Ships 2008 the blog. Since then, every time I looked at the Eagle’s mast, I said, I should have made it up and over.
Here’s the back story:
All my life, I’ve been afraid of heights.
It’s a legitimate fear. Lots of people have it. But I’ve come to use it as an excuse. I’ve depended on it to keep me off of steep, narrow mountain trails, driving the Going To The Sun Highway in Montana’s Glacier National Park and scampering to the tall parts of tall ships.
Reporters can do that. Photographers can’t.
Janet Jensen, who shot the glorious pictures you saw of the U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle, is, as she puts it, “not fond of heights.”
I had no idea. Any time she needed the advantage of height for a shot, she shimmied into a safety harness and, accompanied by a cadet, climbed up the ratlines and over into the tops.
She does it, she said, by using her professionalism to stifle her fears.
Reporters can take notes from just about anywhere, and I prefer deck level.
Lt. Chris Nolan, the Eagle’s third officer, assumed I would, and probably should, climb the rigging. To do so would give me an idea of how cadets turn a challenge into a favorite part of their duty aboard this ship.
So, on the evenings I was aboard the Eagle, about an hour before sunset, he reminded me that I should go up. Every evening, I managed to become engrossed in a compelling interview until the sun went down. Until last Tuesday.
There it was, a big red ball, sinking into the Olympics. And there he was, Lt. Nolan, smiling, telling me I could do it: I could climb the ratlines to a metal platform 60 feet above the deck.
I snapped and cinched myself into a harness under the tutelage of senior cadet Ron Vyas, 21. “You can do it,” he said.
The rules are simple, he said. Never put two feet on the same horizontal line at the same time. Never hold onto a line. Trust only the cables running from the deck to the mast. Attach the harness clip to the rigging any time you stop.
“You can do it, ma’am,” Vyas said with the kind of gentle reassurance one does not expect from a 21-year-old.
He even had me believing it.
With Seattle’s skyline coming to light behind me, I stepped onto the ship’s rail and started climbing the ratlines at about one fifth of cadet speed.
The ratlines form a tall, skinny triangle made of cable and line. Thirty feet up, I clipped on to get my bearings. Around 40 feet up, the courses narrow, which meant my ladder changed shape.
“You can do it,” said Vyas, who was helping me.
Nolan, who climbed onto the platform from the other side, looked down on us. “You can do it,” he said.
I began to believe them. Very slowly, clipping on at every advance, I went up until my head was just under the triangular platform.
Sailors call the platforms “tops.” That’s short for “fighting tops.”
In the age of war under sail, snipers of the Royal Marines would climb the ratlines, stand on the tops and shoot at sailors on the decks of enemy ships.
Back then, some tops had “lubber holes,” hatches in the deck of the tops. Landlubbers could climb the ratlines, then just pop into the top.
The Eagle’s tops have no lubber holes. The platform is the tricky part. The lines look as though they require a climber to bend backwards and climb over the edge of the platform. There’s a turn in the route, which would be no problem at all to negotiate say, 3 feet off the ground.
Sixty feet in the air, it stopped me.
“You can do it,” Nolan and Vyas told me. “You can clip on.”
I did not believe them. I made it up, but not over.
Lt. Mike Keyser of the Eagle hates heights, too. But he has made it up and over at least five times.
“Try again,” he said. “You can do it.”
Sunday, I tried again. At the festival I ran into Tacoma police Sgt. C.P. Taylor, who said, “You can do it. You know you can do it.”
Police community liaison officer Bert Hayes, whom I’ve known for several years and like, said, “And if you can’t, you’re sniveling whiner.
“Carpe diem,” said Taylor, urging me to seize the day.
Or, if you’re on the ratlines, anything that’s metal.
That’s what I did. Bos’n’s mate Ken McSherry allowed me onboard and said he’d take me up and over.
He did. We made it to the top, over the edge and onto the platform.
It and the rigging were the same. But trying to come close to the Eagle’s standards made all the difference in me.
I may be a sniveling whiner, but I made it up one set of ratlines, over the fighting top and down the ratlines on the opposite side.

Tall Ships organizers are being conservative with their crowd estimates this time around.

Festival spokesman Matt Erlich said they estimated a total of 200,000 by noon on Saturday, and another 150,000 by 6 p.m. on Sunday.

You might remember that in 2005, Tall Ships took guff for an exuberant estimate of about a million visitors. They later reduced that to 700,000, counting the people who came out in boats, lined the Ruston Way shoreline, dropped big bucks at the fair, and boarded the ships.

This year, they are being more cautious. They’re counting the people who use the $10 parking at the Tacoma Dome lots, and they are getting crowd estimates from the police.

They are not counting the people who found street parking in Tacoma, or used the transit lots by Freighthouse Square. Those, at 1 p.m. Sunday, were full.

Whilst sauntering through Trade Winds village, particularly Captain Kidd's Cove, I noticed that female pirates significantly outnumbered their male counterparts. Why this gender imbalance, considering that piracy wasn't exactly the most female-friendly profession?

Nena "Barakuda" Boyer of Shelton offered one explanation. "Once you put kids into play, you need women to draw them in," she said. "Men can come off as too gruff."

Bellevue's Allan "Bartholomew Heart" Seuss interpreted the mini-trend as a long-delayed homage to female buccaneers.

"In history, there have been female pirateers," he said. "You just don't hear about them."

Tongue firmly in cheek, Robbin "Black Widow" Emery said that her crew was on the lookout for a "robust" male captain. "You must be a manly-man pirate to handle some of these wenches."

Touché.

Welcome aboard Washington State’s unladylike Lady.
Every day in port, two of Lady Washington’s doughty crew spend an hour belowdecks, packing black powder and tinfoil into tubes. Then gunner Sam Riggs, who has dreadlocks and piercing a pirate queen might envy, brings them up to her guns aft and amidships in a red box covered with “I (heart) black powder” and “I (heart) explosives” bumper stickers.
Sunday, Riggs was an inspiration to another Samantha: Samantha Folk, 6, and a student at Cascade Christian School, was heavily, if only temporarily, tattooed, when she boarded the Lady for a morning Battle Sail.
Lady, Hawaiian Chieftain, Lynx and Amazing Grace have been making three battle sails a day since Friday. That’s nine hours a day on Commencement Bay, shooting at each other to the delight of the likes of young Samantha.
But it’s not all fun and explosives.
There are rules to the privateer life, as Steward Beth Loudon told the passengers.
Stay clear of the block-and-tackle they call “The Widowmaker” on the foc’sl. If it breaks loose while crew are hoisting sail, you don’t want it living up to its name on your head.
Don’t put the baby down by the scuppers. “They’ve been known to swallow bags,” Loudon said of the drainage holes in the hull. “Please keep small children clear of them.”
And stay clear of the gunner and the 3-foot fireball she generates every time she lights a fuse.
Three years ago, Joe Bartlett, a mild-mannered City of Tacoma Public Safety Division employee took a sail on the wild side. He was impressed, in the traditional sense.
Lady Washington commandeered his body and stole his soul. She beckoned him back for sail training and brought him on as crew. Now, every vacation, he jumps into funnies and sets sail.
Funnies, he said, are the ship’s vintage costumes and come in two sizes: “Too big and too small,” he said. “I have my own, now.”
His daughter, Wendy Bartlett, started out on Lady, crewed on the X. E. Johnson and Irving Johnson out of Los Angeles, and chimes in on Tall Ships sites on My Space. She’s adding to the You Might Be A Tall Ship Sailor definitions there.
Joe’s favorite: “You might be a Tall Ship sailor if you meet a person of the opposite sex and wonder how hot and well-built their shower is.”
Bartlett might have said more, but skipper Evil Ryan Meyer barked an order.
“They call me Evil,” he told the passengers. “Don’t ask why.”
You might embarrass him if you did. He got the name when he lost a game of pick-up-sticks.
If you live and work aboard Tall Ships, and your moniker is Evil Ryan, you’d best have a battle plan.
“You are always trying to maneuver the boat into a position to fire the broadside guns lengthwise down the other vessel,” he said. “The farther the cannonball travels inside a boat, the more damage it is going to do.”
There was a time, he said, when captains would sail alongside one another and fire broadsides.
“That’s when soldiers wore bright uniforms and stood in straight lines,” Evil Ryan said. “They eventually realized that you had a longer life expectancy if you ducked.”
So privateers like the original Lynx, built in Baltimore’s Fells Point, darted up, fired, and sped away while crew on bulky British warships yelled “That’s cheating!”
If you were scoring a cannon fight, which Evil Ryan has not been doing during the festival, you’d get a point for a broadside, two for a bow shot and three if you hit the bow and messed up the steering.
At Tall Ships, you get points for pleasing the crowd with a big noise.
The Lady’s Captain Rob Mizer fielded a request radioed in from shore. A boat carrying passengers with handicaps would be coming up the port side. Would he be kind enough to fire on it?
He was.
And when the skipper of the Virginia V sashayed past, just begging for gunpowder, he obliged again. The passengers cheered.
Randy Marquis, a Tacoma Public Utilities employee was not as pleased. He’s a volunteer fireman on the old Mosquito Fleet ferry.
“I basically keep the engine oiled,” he said.
That’s what he was doing when Gunner Sam let loose.
“Geez,” he said later. “I thought the boiler blew up. You could feel the concussion coming through the hull.”
Lynx could not let a battle sail pass without sneaking up on her old adversary.
Friday evening, her gunner, Billy Gernertt, had lit the fuse and yelled “Live Free or Die!” as he fired on Lady.
Sunday morning, Gunner Sam lit the fuse and crew member “Preston “Wiggles” Nirattisai shouted “Live Free or Die Hard!” as they delivered a close broadside to Lynx.
“You missed!” someone yelled back at him from 10 feet across the water.
Lady, meanwhile, was a sitting duck for a sneak attack from below.
Amazing Grace crew member Peter Denton had grabbed his wooden sword, jumped ship and boarded Lady from the water.
Within a minute, he was captured, disarmed and held up for ransom from his former shipmates.
“I am hoping for ice cream,” Evil Ryan said. “Maybe a cake.”
It was not to be.
Someone aboard Lady threw Denton a line. Both captains maneuvered their boats close togther, and Denton swung home in fine Johnny Depp style.
The ships motored home together.
Another day. Another battle sail.

An Army landing craft is offering free tours of Foss Waterway both today and tomorrow. Excursions are every half hour, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Board at Thea's Park.

Tomorrow is Military Appreciation Day at the festival, which means that all active service members and their families receive half off the price of premium and regular access boarding tickets.

Hedy Woods is no stranger to the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle.

She played on its decks as a child in New London, Conn. She traveled to Mobile, Ala., to see the ship during the city’s tricentennial celebration in 2002. And the promise of seeing the three-masted barque again drew her from her home in Nashville to Tall Ships Tacoma 2008.

“I follow the Eagle,” the 66-year-old said. “I knew there would be a festival of ships, and I wanted to see the Eagle again.”

It’s a family affair, she explained.

Woods’ father, Frederick Swanson, was on the original American crew to sail the ship from Germany to the United States.

“He had to translate between the different sets of sailors to keep the ship running straight,” she said. “It must have been fascinating.”

Swanson was still a young child when his mother died, so his father sent him to live with grandparents in Germany. He returned to the United States after completing high school and joined the Coast Guard.

Germany handed over the Eagle after its defeat in World War II, and the Coast Guard asked Swanson to sail with it because he was bilingual.

During the trip to Alabama, the officer of the day showed her photos kept in the captain’s safe. On one of the photos, she said, was a man she was certain was her father.

“She was going through things pretty quick, and I didn’t want to interrupt her,” Woods said. “But I was stunned. Just absolutely stunned.”

Swanson couldn’t make it; he spends most of his days in an assisted-living facility outside Coral Gables, Fla.

“He has Alzheimer’s,” Woods said, “but when someone mentions the Coast Guard or the Eagle, he perks right up. He won’t forget that.”

More motivation to get out early today: At 10:30 a.m., the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra will be performing at the Treasure Cove stage in Thea's Park in honor of the armed services. The orchestra will be fortuitously positioned in front of the Eagle as well, so don't forget to bring your cameras.

Peter Haley/The News Tribune

In case you've missed some of the links to all the great multimedia available online for Tall Ships Tacoma, here's a list of the galleries, video, audio slideshows and 360-degree QTVRs we've put together so far.

• Gallery: Tall Ships Tacoma Parade of Sail

• Gallery: Setting sail with the tall ships

• Video: Learn about cannon battling on tall ships

• Gallery: Photos from the Tall Ships festival

• Gallery: Tall ships muster in Quartermaster Harbor

• Slideshow: It's a pirate's life

• Gallery: Aboard the USCG Eagle

• Gallery: Tall ships in Victoria, BC.

• 360 VR: Meet the Lady Washington

• 360 VR: Meet the Bounty

• 360 VR: Meet the Eagle

Festival spokesman Matthew Erlich says organizers estimate that 200,000 people attended the festival between Thursday and Saturday.

The improving weather forecast for Sunday - morning clouds and afternoon sun - could cause a surge in attendance.

Staff multimedia producer Joe Barrentine spent some time Saturday learning about how sailing ships engage in battle. Check out his video here.

Apparently the folks on the HMS Bounty liked our poster of the ship sailing in front of Stadium High School.

It's taped to a cabinet below deck:

Name: Kathy Lapp

Age: 44

Place of residence: Tacoma

Job duties: “I’m volunteering in the media center. I answer questions, escort media members on the ships and write press releases. I wanted something completely opposite of crunching numbers” at her day job at Russell Investments.

Favorite experience: “It’s the people, hands down. The people have been wonderful.”

As a ship liaison, Mickie Hucke has one job title but many responsibilities.

During her shift Saturday morning, the Edgewood resident tracked attendance on the HMS Bounty with an electric counter. She encouraged Tacoma Tall Ships 2008 visitors to get excited about boarding the full-rigged ship. And she was on call if the crew needs anything.

“That can be anything from taking garbage off, finding places to do laundry, arranging transportation in town, finding marine supply shops – basically anything they need,” said Hucke. “The idea is to make it flow smooth. We want to make this fun for the crew and the visitors.”

About 500 volunteers are working the festival as liaisons, organizers said, and each ship has several people assigned to it each shift. (The number of liaisons varies by the size of the ship.) The volunteers begin arriving at 6 a.m. – four hours before the festival opens – and helps take care of whatever the crew needs done for the day. On Saturday, that meant helping arrange transportation for a day trip to Mount Rainier.

=> Read more!

I'm being told the credit card system in the ticket windows is back online. Also the wait for the big ships is down to about an hour.

Name: Philip Close

Age: 15

Place of residence: University Place

Job duties: “I’m in line management. I make sure people don’t get too rowdy while waiting in line for the Class A ships.”

Favorite experience: “The food. There’s a crepes stand that is just awesome.”

Name: Bob Arenburg

Age: 63

Place of residence: Tacoma

Job duties: “I’m loading and unloading buses and answering any questions people have.’

Favorite experience: “I actually haven’t had a chance to see much of the festival yet. Hopefully that changes this afternoon.”

Name: Vicki Borovich

Age: 65

Place of residence: Puyallup

Job duties: “I work at the information center. I give out maps, brochures and other things people need and sell golden Tall Ships Tacoma pins.”

Favorite experience: “I was a greeter yesterday, and I got to wander around, talk to people and hand out maps. Just chatting with people is the best experience.”

● The line to see the Class A ships is stretching longer than two hours. To compensate, Tall Ships organizers are handing out free bottles of water to those waiting in line. They’re also distributing free passports, which is a $10 value.

● The credit card system in the ticket booths is down. The problem, organizers say, is with the credit card companies, not the organization. But Tall Ships has negotiated the ATM fee from $4 to $2 for those who only brought plastic.

We're going to be profiling some of the volunteers who make Tall Ships Tacoma 2008 possible.

Name: Karen Knipher

Age: “50-something”

Job duties: “I make sure everyone in the VIP area is taken care of. Also, I make sure people who are going to be drinking alcohol are wearing the proper wristband.”

Favorite experience: “I have two. My favorite experience as a volunteer is just to be able to say thank you to all those who allow Tall Ships Tacoma to happen through their sponsorships. Personally, I went on a cruise on the Lady Washington last night during the fireworks. It was just a fabulous, fabulous time.”

The Tacoma Symphony Orchestra will perform a free concert tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. in Thea’s Park. (The U.S. Coast Guard Eagle as a backdrop? Now that’s a setting.)

The orchestra will perform “a program of light classics, popular and patriotic favorites,” according to a press release. Among them ate Tchaikovsky’s Russian Sailor’s Dance and John Phillip Sousa’s Anchor and Star March.

For those of you who only know classical music through movies, the orchestra will play The Blue Danube (the Strauss classic from “2001: A Space Odyssey”) and the theme music from Indiana Jones.

Camp Patriot, a non-profit which provides outdoor activities wounded veterans, is hosting a kick-off party for their “Quest for the Summit” program aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle today.

Three vets will climb Mount Rainier beginning Monday, and two groups – Rainier Mountaineering Inc. and International Mountain Guides – will help with their ascent.

The meet-and-greet aboard the Eagle begins at 6 p.m.

We’re back at Tall Ships Tacoma 2008 today. We’ve got reporters covering ship liaisons, the volunteer effort, the crew of the HMS Oriole and the impact on local businesses. Photographers are going to be on sea and on the ground.

I got a call this evening from an irate woman from Puyallup who'd just returned from a frustrating day at the festival. She said she got to the event early, as advised, and paid $10 for a general boarding pass but was unable to get on eight of the ships that she had paid for and wanted to see. She kept getting turned back because the ships were out on sailing excursions. She suspects that there are many other unhappy customers out there. (She didn't want her name used in the newspaper but wanted us to be aware of the problem.)

I asked festival spokesman Matthew Erlich if they'd heard from others with similar grievances. "Complaints have been relatively isolated from where I've been sitting," he said. Organizers caution that buying a boarding pass doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to board all the ships. About two-thirds of the fleet is running sailing excursions during the event (that's how they pay the bills), so any particular ship may be out in the bay when you want to see it, Erlich said. If you’re determined to board a certain ship, you might want to check the sailing schedule.

I'll put this question out to readers: Did you get your money's worth at the festival? Reply in the comments below, or send an e-mail to newstips@thenewstribune.com.

I just talked to festival spokesman Matthew Erlich to see if organizers had a crowd estimate that we could publish. The short answer is not yet.

They are still in the process of calculating attendance. For a mostly free festival like this, it's an inexact science. They will use hard indicators like sales of boarding passes and sailing excursions. Because many people enjoyed the onshore activities and Parade of Sail without buying a ticket – organizers also will use sampling from aerial photos and consult with police.

For this round, organizers think they're on track to match the consensus number from the 2005 event: 700,000.

While checking out the schooners at the Northwest Passage Village, this afternoon 15-year-old Matthew Sutherland of Puyallup said what just about everyone was thinking:

“These are really nice boats. I’d like to own one.”

As of about 3:30 this afternoon, we’re told, the Foss Waterway Seaport museum has already received more visitors – about 12,000 – than it received during all of Tall Ships Tacoma 2005.

It’s constantly packed inside. Families are posing for photos in front of the vintage canoes and boats. Some are taking a break and watching videos in a darkened corner of the mammoth building. Others are admiring the antique phones or old engines on display.

"It's all part of an educational experience," Seattle's Sue Wing said. "Seeing the tall ships outside and reading about everything in here really puts it all in perspective."

Tall Ships spokesman Matt Erlich passes along these few notes:

● About 1,200 volunteers helped the festival run smoothly today.
● AMVETS hosted a barbecue for the crews of all the ships.
● There were no significant operational problems.
● The lines are moving but long, so it’s best to arrive early.

There's nothing quite like the smell of cedar.

At opposite ends of Treasure Cove, crews are chipping away at giant logs-turned-canoes. Little hills of wood chips have gathered near the feet of the crews. The pleasant smell can be sensed from 10 feet away.

Philip Red Eagle said about 100 people have been working on a Salish-style hunting canoe on Saturdays for the past 2½ years. When completed, it will measure 28 feet, 9 inches.

“It’ll hold about six pullers and one skipper when it’s done,” said Red Eagle, a participant in the Canoe Movement, an effort to help American Indian youths experience their heritage through canoe travel.

Little flakes of wood are tangled with Takirirangi Smith’s hair. He’s a Maori from New Zealand and is building a traditional fishing canoe. It’ll be just under 20 feet when it’s completed.

“I looked at the log,” he said, “and I saw a canoe.”

I'm always a bit amazed by the allure of free entertainment.

Some of the booths with the most people are companies offering games -- but usually only after you fill out a survey or hand over your e-mail, which will soon be flooded with cheap prescription drug offers and Nigerians needing a place to harbor their lottery winnings.

Here are some of the highlights I've seen:

● The Emerald Queen Casino is offering a blackjack game. You get a T-shirt for 21. Even if you lose, you still get a coupon book. And if you win the shirt, you'll eventually gamble it away.

● State Farm has one of those arcade-style basketball hoops. But after you win, they deny your claim.

● The City of Tacoma offers a beanbag toss. After that, they beg you to join the Human Rights Commission.

● The longshoreman union was handing out free Rainiers tickets. I'd write something snarky here, except I'm worried I'll be walking to my car one day and have a hook jabbed into my right temple.

Looking for hair-raising tales of nautical adventure? You can’t beat the Red Jacket, a modest schooner based in our own modest city of Tacoma.

Dangerous storms, wartime intrigue, disastrous fire, international acclaim – the Red Jacket has seen it all. Here are some highlights:

• Built in 1920, the ship changed owners often in its early years. It spent five years sailing the South Seas and was demasted in a storm in 1930 en route from Hawaii to Los Angeles.

• Bought by a Seattle businessman in 1933, the Red Jacket traveled to the Northwest on a freighter. That same year, it caught fire and was shot from shore with large-bore elephant hunting rifles to sink and save it.

• It spent 1941-43 in Friday Harbor, where it snooped for enemy submarines.

• In 1990 it struck the Murray Morgan Bridge in a December ice storm, suffering $50,000 in damage.

• It survived to be chosen one of the 100 greatest sailing yachts in North America by Sailing magazine in 1993.

Terry and Renee Paine have owned the ship for 21 years. Renee says it’s the last big schooner built in Puget Sound that’s still around here.

“They mostly burn and rot away, and she’s done both of those,” Renee says of the Red Jacket. “It’s a great story. I always say she’s got a checkered past.”

So you’re stuck with the ankle-biter for a day (and, really, a lifetime – but we won’t get into that). The munchkin doesn’t care so much to see the Eagle or the Kaisei or any of the other tall ships. And he’s about 19 years too young to hit the beer garden.

Luckily, there’s a place where he can play games while you pour that rum from a flask into the Island Oasis drink.

It’s called Captain Kidd’s Cove (clever, eh?), and it’s got all sorts of games that, if your kid wasn’t playing, would make you consider taking a nap on some gravel.

But the kids sure seemed to be having a good time.

Dozens of adults dressed in pirate garb entertained kids with raise-the-flag contests and some sort of hockey played with Wiffle bats and rubber rodents. They also offered a “load the cannon” game, in which kids tossed Wiffle balls into the mouth of a replica cannon.

“This is a cool downshift for the kids,” Parkland’s Maureen Clarke said. “They were getting bored waiting in line. And when we got on some of the ships, my daughter wasn’t exactly interested. So this is something for them.”

You don’t have to have a big ship to participate in the Tall Ships Festival, just a tall one. A case in point: the Lavengro.

At 63 feet, the Levengro is third of the length of some of the festival’s ships. But its 48-foot main mast stands proud.

Built in 1927 in Mississippi, it’s one of two original Biloxi Bay shrimp schooners still in existence. It was commissioned as a family yacht.

It’s currently owned by the Northwest Schooner Society and is based in Lake Union. The society is looking for volunteers. For more information about the ship and the society, visit its web site.

The Nina is docked in Treasure Cove Village. And where there’s a replica of a Spanish ship, there must be conquistadors.

About 10 of the Spanish soldiers – faithfully played by participants in local reenactment troupe Goode’s Company – are performing for the crowds at Northwest Passage.

They’re donned in the garb of the era, down to metal helmets and breastplates. They regularly march in formation and swordfight for the crowds. And they’re ready for battle with pikes and muskets.

“We’re a ‘company of foote,’ or infantry, fighting in the low countries – today’s Netherlands,” said Gordon Frye of the Renaissance Military Society. “Because the English and the Spanish saw each other so often on the battlefield, their look and manner really began to resemble each other.

“That’s why, even though we primarily focus on Elizabethan reenactments, we can play the part of the Spanish.”

The group, which consists of men from around the Puget Sound area, is portraying the Spanish as an homage to the country’s history of North American exploration.

Reenactments of times past from the 1580s to the late Victorian era will be an ongoing staple of Tall Ships Tacoma, said John Salicco, the living history coordinator with the festival.

“People can often get more interested in history if they see it before their own eyes,” he said. “And we aim to entertain at the same time.”

Northwest Passage has a music stage offering live bands all day. Here's a performance from Shamrocks in the Wind:

An F-16 from the Freedom Fair airshow is flying past the Thea Foss Waterway

One of the more popular stops in Northwest Passage is Arrow Leather, which sells all things a good pirate wannabe needs, like hats, feathers, wooden swords, telescopes and leather clothing.

“Everybody wants to be a pirate ever since they were young,” co-owner Jim Wood said. “We’re letting them fulfill that.”

Jim and his wife, Kil, work out of their Chehalis home and make all the leather products. This is the 18th year they’ve been selling the stuff on the fair and festival circuit.

“This is so cool,” said 33-year-old Will Bungert of Lacey. “It lets me be a kid again.”

You already knew Marlon Brando was larger than life. But who would have guessed he required a replica of the HMS Bounty to be one-third bigger than the original?

Okay, it wasn’t Brando’s doing. When MGM Film Studio filmed the 1962 version of “Mutiny on the Bounty,” a life-size replica of the ship proved impractical. It wouldn’t have been able to accommodate cameras and other equipment. So filmmakers built their version of the Bounty one-third larger than the original.

This Bounty is 180 feet and pretty darn impressive. Above, its rigging looks like the world’s most complex cat’s cradle. Below deck, dimly lit crew quarters give visitors a sense of life at sea – both today and in the 18th century.

One guide called it “a Hollywood version of what (the Bounty) should have looked like.” So it’s no surprise the ship has been used in other productions. Some of the movies include: “Treasure Island,” “Yellow Beard,” “”Sponge Bob Square Pants” and “Pirate’s of the Caribbean – Dead Man’s Chest.”

When you’re below deck, look close for a photograph of Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. And, of course, you can’t miss the prominent portrait of Brando.

Learn more about the Bounty at its web site.

The Port of Tacoma is apparently on a charm offensive. It has streetlight banners hanging up and down Dock Street:

The longest line I’ve seen today has been at the entrance to the gangplank to view the Class A ships in Treasure Cove Village.

Each time I’ve walked by, the line is longer and longer.

Some advice: Just treat it like the line at an amusement park. It’ll be a wait, but something cool lies at the end.

I’m back from Northwest Passage. Most of the non Class-A ships are docked here, but the companies and organizations that have set up shop offer a rich mix of products and services.

Seriously, almost everything you need to survive is here. Real estate? Check. Windows to go with that new house? Want to join a union, or join an environmental interest group or enlist in the Marines? You can do all of that.

Stands also offer food – mostly usual fair fare like corn dogs and elephant ears – and souvenirs like T-shirts and paintings.

Times are tough all over, judging from the tips jar aboard the Kaisei, a 151-foot brigantine built in 1990. Affixed to the jar is this note: “Tips for destitute sailors! Thanks. Kaisei Crew.”

As of 11:30 a.m., the jar contained just three $1 bills.

Of course, if you’re feeling really generous (and adventurous), you can join the crew for a trip from Tacoma to Port Alberni, B.C., July 7-11. The cost: $895.

For more information, check out the Kaisei’s web site here.

Doc Kaiser was a landscaper and bartender with no sailing experience when he visited the Nina 10 years ago. Today, he’s the ship’s first mate.

Kaiser, then a Wisconsin resident, heard the ship was looking for a cook. He signed on for the adventure, and there’s been plenty of it. He’s sailed from the Great Lakes to the Caiman Islands, and many a spot in between.

The ship, owned by the Columbus Foundation, is a replica of one of the three ships Christopher Columbus sailed to American in 1492. It’s 115 feet long and has a crew of six. But in Columbus’ day, 27 men would have called it home, making for some tight quarters.

Even Columbus’ crib wasn’t much to speak of: a small cabin with two bunks, a desk and just 4 feet of head room. Can’t imagine what it was like to sail the ocean on a ship like this without knowing exactly where you were going, how long you’d be gone or whether you’d come back.

“This vessel is what we call the space shuttle of the 15th century,” says Captain Morgan Sanger.

For his part, Kaiser plans to jump ship and return to Wisconsin next year.
“I’ve got all my traveling in,” he says.

- David Wickert

The Thea Foss Waterway isn’t totally jammed with people right now, but the crowds are growing. A steady stream of cars was heading toward the parking areas, and on the bus from the media lot, I heard the traffic dispatcher telling drivers it was OK to let people stand in the aisles.

If your hunger for news on tall ships can't wait, the Peninsula Daily News has an article about the groundbreaking of the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend.

We'll have reporters at Tall Ships Tacoma again today. I'll be bringing you consumer tips. Dave Wickert will be touring a few ships.

Check back throughout the day for updates.

Securely moored, Eagle took on her first visitors in Tacoma.

Connie McCloud, representing the Puyallup Tribe, presented the ship with a blanket, a hand-woven basket and a hand-carved paddle.

Capt. Christopher Sinnett returned the honor with an engraving of Eagle.

Then Peggy McCloud introduced the students of Grandview Early Learning Center, Annalicia McCloud, 3, and shy, Cynthia LaPlante, 6, Jazmine Bluehorse, 8, Sidfredo Valdez, 9, Dairon Earl-Lovejoy, 11, Daylon Nelson, 12, and Damion Laplant, 7.

The children sang a welcome song to the crew, and followed it with The Eagle Song, dancing with their arms outstretched as they sang.

“I want to declare you all honorary Eagle crew members for the week,” Capt. Sinnett told them, and gave each of them a memorial Eagle coin.

The first shots came from the direction of Ruston Way. Cannon fire from the park.

Eagle obliged with a double barrage from its guns, 12-gauge blanks louder than anything else on that end of the water.

The cadets had climbed the ratlines an hour earlier and had been standing at attention in the air.

Smoke puffs appeared on the shore, prefaces to the booms. Eagle let no shot go unanswered.

Eagle marked the end of the parade. As she passed, the no-go zone for near-shore boating dissolved. The Coast Guard had laid it down to protect everyone on the water, and to make sure photographers on shore got good shots.

“We heard there was too much photo shopping going on in 2005,” said Ens. Derek Miller.

Let’s hear a “Hip hip hurrah for Miller from every shooter who did not have to erase a Bayliner from a good shot of Bounty.

Near the grain silos, the huge American flag blowing behind Eagle became fouled in lines.

Cadet Matt Poore, 21, of Chesapeake, Va., would have none of it.

He climbed the rigging, then inched his way down the mizzen boom, clipped his safety belt onto the shrouds, and freed the flag.
Then he inched back 20 feet above the moving deck, climbed down and walked away as if he had done nothing special.

The feeling among the passengers was not shared. It was, they said, a remarkable thing to see such daring and commitment in one event. They wanted to know if he’d done it on his own, or had been ordered up.

“I saw they were having some problems flying the national ensign,” Poore said. “It wasn’t flying straight. I figured that, especially so close to the Fourth of July, we should honor the country and the national ensign. So I asked permission and went up.”

“Woohoo! Git ‘er done, baby!” Ensign Paul Junghaus, 18, said, walking by and clapping Poore on the back.

Then Junghaus, who is from Chesapeake, Va., looked out at the spectator boats around Eagle.

“That’s the most boats I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he said. “This is amazing.”

The Lynx of Portsmouth, N.H., turns toward the Foss Waterway in front of Old Town Tacoma during the Parade of Sails today.

Sailors from the California-based Kaisei wave from the bow of the ship to shore Thursday as they passed in the Parade of Sail.

I just spotted our intrepid columnist on board the Eagle, which is now docked in the Foss Waterway.

The guy standing next to me, Bill Fleet, got some photos of her waving at me.

Fleet and his wife, Joan, spent the morning on the Cutty Sark. They got up at 4 a.m. and went to the Tacoma Dome to catch a bus to the ship.

In 2005, they went out on the Zodiac.

"You know, it's really wonderful it's here," Joan Fleet said. "I think it's really reflective of what's been happening in Tacoma. It's a real volunteer effort."

Fans of the Tall ships turned out in droves to see them arrive this morning along Ruston Way.

A Tacoma police officer passes in front of the Lady Washington as the Parade of Sails began this morning. Thousands of people turned out to watch the starting event for this year's Tall Ships Tacoma.

The show over Ruston Way hasn’t ended yet.

Two F-16s are flying over Commencement Bay – likely a tune-up flight for tomorrow’s Freedom Fair demonstration.

They’re loud, but they’re cool to look at.

The USCG Eagle is making its way down Ruston Way, and there’s a sense of disappointment.

This has been the ship everyone was excited to see. It has an entourage of probably 50 other ships and a helicopter following it. But most of the spectators kept asking one question: “Why aren’t its sails up?”

“I think it would have been a lot more beautiful with the sails up,” Lakewood’s Charlene Baez said.

It was a common sentiment. Motoring in is likely much more efficient, but thousands didn’t pack Ruston Way to witness efficiency. They wanted looks.

“They should have had the sails up, even if they were still motoring,” Kent’s Mel Davis said. “Maybe get some fans out on board and blow wind into them.”

But, Davis and others said, seeing America’s Tall Ship cutting through the waters of Commencement Bay is still an amazing sight.

“It seems like an anticlimax,” he said, “but, really, how cool is it to see the Eagle here?”

UPDATE: Here's the answer from an earlier blog post from Kathleen Merryman, who's been on the Eagle since Monday.

Eagle motored into Seattle, just as she will into Commencement Bay. Her sails are massive, to give her speed and power. But because she is square-rigged, and so big, she does not have the maneuverability under sail to enter a confined passage with other vessels in the area.

The Eagle passed by a few minutes ago, and just like that everyone is leaving. Now everyone has to deal with the parking lot that is Ruston Way.

Overall, people seemed most impressed by the Bounty.

"It was the most realistic," said Michele Bazdyrev of Tacoma.

The Eagle was the last, but some were bothered that it didn't have it's sails down.

"I thought this was supposed to be a Parade of Sails," a woman complained while rushing through a crowd to leave.

The Jack Sparrow look-alike has lots of company. A pirate with toy rats strapped to his boots just finished regaling an audience at the Dock Street Landing with a story that seemed to promote sleeping underneath a bar.

And then there was the incongruous sight of a pirate couple standing in front of some machines that resemble ATMs taking a touch-screen survey.

Something not right about that.

I guess I missed Sparrow's visit to the balcony outside the media center. He posed for pictures, according to one of the Tall Ships volunteers.

Someone asked him which ship was his.

He replied, "I haven't decided yet."

Hank Cramer is on stage at Thea's Park, belting out sea shanties to the folks gathered nearby to eat alligators on sticks, jambalaya and other fare.

But he's competing with the roar of a Coast Guard chopper over head, and the clanging of rail cars slamming together on the BNSF Railway lines across the street.

Cramer lives in Winthrop now, a good bit away from the sea. But he says he is a former shantyman and helmsman on the Lady Washington.

Eagle has joined the parade.

We bided our time, gathering a random fleet of about 300 small boats around us, and watched Tall Ships coming out of Quartermaster Harbor. They sailed past The Fir, the Coast Guard buoy tender on site to help manage the start.

The Coast Guard helicopter you see circling over the parade is an HH65 Dolphin out of Port Angeles.

Ens. Derek Miller is pleased with the number of boats waiting for Eagle.

“They’re scattered,” he said. “It’s not like we’re sailing into a wall of boats.”

Two 41-foot Coast Guard utility boats from Station Seattle are cruising next to us, gently but firmly keeping smaller boats at a safe distance.

Coming in to Commencement Bay, we’re hearing cannon fire. I’m guessing Hawaiian Chieftain is getting frisky.

Capt. J. Christopher Sinnett just announced that we will be falling in behind Hawaiian Chieftain and a restored 83-foot Coast Guard Cutter..

Once we moor, representatives of the Puyallup Tribe will board Eagle to exchange welcoming courtesies and sing “The Eagle Song.”

Capt. Sinnett pronounced “Puyallup” properly. Not bad from a Coastie from the opposite coast.

Brian Everstine was walking east on Ruston Way. I was heading west. It wasn’t quite driving the golden spike, but we’re both happy to report we’ve canvassed the entire street.

(But don’t worry – we’re still going to bring more coverage.)

We’ve found the last open table at Katie Downs. This place is absolutely packed. Said the woman behind the bar: “It’s been an absolute madhouse in here today.”

I took pity on her (and the six people behind me in line) and didn’t interrogate her further.

Ron Simchen stands at attention when each ship passes.

When one comes near the shore, Simchen raises the flag of the Puyallup Tribe to both welcome the ship and its crew and let them know whose waters they are in.

"It's one of those exciting jobs," Simchen said. "How often do you get to see tall ships?"

Simchen is the Puyallup's tribal veterans representative, a Vietnam-era Army veteran. He did get to see tall ships once before, at the bicentennial celebration in the 1970s in Baltimore.

"You should have seen all those ships," he said.

This year he was asked by the tribe to serve guard. Ask him, and he'll say it is just another job.

But as each ship comes in, they raise a flag as a cue to Simchen. The tall ships are asking for permission to enter Simchen's, and the tribe's, waters.

Russ Carmack/The News Tribune
The HMS Bounty makes its way down Ruston Way waterfront as hundreds watch the Parade of Sails.

TNT photographers have been busy capturing all the majesty of Tall Ships Week. Here is a list of photo slideshows we've compiled so far with more to come today and throughout the weekend.

• Gallery: Tall Ships Tacoma Parade of Sail

• Gallery: Tall ships muster in Quartermaster Harbor

• Slideshow: It's a pirate's life

• Gallery: Aboard the USCG Eagle

• Gallery: Tall ships in Victoria, BC.

A group of about 40 ducks just swam up to the area between The Ram and C.I. Shenanigan’s. Half stayed in the water and half played in the mud.

For a few minutes, these things were a bigger attraction than the Tall Ships. The ducks would honk, and the kids sitting in the area giggled. They waddled around, and the kids clapped.

Ten minutes later, the children grew bored. And soon, the ducks quietly swam away.

Apparently fame doesn’t even last 15 minutes anymore.

Russ CarmackThe News Tribune
Members of the Puyallup Indian Canoe Family exchange gifts with the crew of the Lady Washington in Quartermaster Harbor Thursday morning before the parade of sail.

A ribbon cutting and welcoming songs from the Puyallup Tribe officially opened Tall Ships this morning.

To make it official, politicians even cut a ribbon.

"Sailing is a big part of our history and (Tall Ships) is a great way for young people to get involved with our history," Congressman Norm Dicks said after welcoming a crowd to the event on Ruston Way.

Ships passed and cannons erupted as politicians spoke, distracting the crowds from the welcomes and sending a collective shake through the crowd with each blast.

"This festival is a great way to celebrate our nations's birthday," said Mike Gregoire, who came on behalf of his wife, Gov. Chris Gregoire.

The crowd is buzzing with excitement at the sight of the Lady Washington rounding the bend and pulling into the waterway followed closely by the HMCS Oriole.

In case anyone missed the sails, a couple of cannon blasts signaled her arrival.

"Excitement, excitement!" Alice Galford of Mesa, Ariz. exclaimed from her perch at Thea's Park.

Galford grew up in Lakewood but hasn't lived her for 30 years. Her brother, Rick Howell of Tacoma, persuaded her to come visit specifically to see the Tall Ships.

"I love the Tall Ships," said Howell, who sails Commencement Bay with his brother.

Howell took the day off work today in hopes of avoiding the huge crowds that he expects tomorrow and over the weekend. The strategy appears to be working. There is a decent crowd now, but still plenty of room to find a good viewing spot.

Howell plans to be on the water tomorrow where he can take in the Freedom Fair fireworks show.

"That's the only way to watch it," he said. "It's in your face."

Eagle’s off Maury Island, under way but not idling. She’s been standing by, waiting for her turn in The Parade of Sail, said Ens. Derek Miller.

Miller has been working for at least six months to make sure this event goes smoothly for all ships, boaters and spectators. He’s deceptively cool, constantly in communication.

Look for Eagle at her starting point off of Quartermaster Harbor at 12:48 p.m. If all other ships are on time, that’s when she’ll bring up the rear of the Parade of Sail. Think of her as The Grand Finale.

As it stands, it’s likely cadets will salute you from the ratlines, or rigging.

The yardarms are a different matter.

Cadets climb the ratlines to yards that are as high as 140 feet off the deck. They scoot to stations at the ends of the yards, then clip on with their safety harnesses.

Given the drizzle and mist, the yards may be damp and slippery. Safety will dictate if the cadets salute you, standing at attention at the ends.

(How helpful are Eagle’s cadets? I asked cadet Bobby Carsey, 19, of Linden, Mich, the proper term for the end of the yardarm. He pulled out his copy of “Eagle Seamanship.”

We looked for, but did not find, the answer. He went off, and a minute later, came back with the word that cadets clip on to the sheet chain.

Think Cadet Carsey as your tax dollars at work in a productive way.)

There are pros and cons of simulated cannon blasts echoing across Ruston Way.

Pros: It sounds really cool. Gives the whole atmosphere an old-timey feel. Faithful readers of The News Tribune know the secret behind the white smoke.

Cons: If you’re standing where I just was – a little west of the Silver Cloud Inn on Ruston Way – the blasts makes one kid cry. And then another. And another. And soon, about 25 kids are all screaming and crying.

The crowd outside the Silver Cloud Inn is now measuring two people deep -- and this is the quieter side of Ruston Way.

As some of the larger ships begin sailing in, plenty of folks are clamoring for a good spot. Lots of people have binoculars, and others brought cameras with huge zoom lenses.

Plenty of families are out, like Jeremy Redding and his 9-year-old son, Nate. They drove from Auburn for today’s Parade of Sail and plan to attend the festival every day this week.

“We left at 6 a.m.,” he said. “In retrospect, maybe we didn’t need to come this early.”

Others epitomized time management. Gig Harbor’s Kiel Marvik dropped two crab traps in the water as he awaited the ships’ arrival. He had only caught a starfish during his first 20 minutes of trying.

“It’s something fun to do now,” said Marvik, a 14-year-old who volunteers at the Foss Waterway Seaport.

A yell from 10 feet away cut Marvik off.

“They’re coming right now!” screamed a woman, pointing toward a few of the larger vessels sailing into town.

With an event like this, it’s a miracle when anything goes smoothly.

Any detail that doesn’t get dropped is a bonus.

And by detail, here, I am talking about 40 cubic yards of garbage, 8,000 gallons of sewage and the hook-up to bring fresh water to 200 people.

Victoria would not let Eagle offload her gray water. They did take her sewage.

Of course, Victoria does not have a sewage treatment plant as we think of such things. Mr. Floatie, the mascot for the people’s movement to build one had to sneak onto environmentally sound Adventuress to talk about the problem.

Oh, and the magic jumbo Dumpster Victoria kept promising never materialized.

That meant that Eagle left Victoria with her trash room nearly full. Chief Michael Barnthouse had to enlist cadets to jump onto the bags. Elite service academy cadets, serving as human trash compactors.

=> Read more!

There are plenty of speeches planned at the VIP spot on Ruston Way, including First Gentlemen Mike Gregoire and Congressman Norm Dicks. While waiting for everything to start, a member of the Lost Boys Pirate group serenaded Gregoire with a pirate shanty. He seemed to enjoy it. "He's a history buff," a member of his staff told me in passing.

Also, I was just told that the CG-83527 will not be in the parade today. No one is sure why right now, spokesman Matthew Erlich said.

The Capt. Jack Sparrow look-alike just went strolling by the esplanade outside the Dock building. I have to say, he looked pretty convincing.

He had the meandering swagger-stagger-walk down pretty good. The costume was spot-on. And he even sounded the part when he remarked to a small crowd seated at tables with sun umbrellas advertising Bud Light that it's, "Not too early to be drinkin'."

In case you didn't notice the time stamp, it's just past 11 a.m.

Not much of a crowd yet on the Foss, but some folks are milling around in rain coats, video cameras and binoculars at the ready.

I was surprised to see some construction activity still going on the dock just outside the media center here in the Dock building. It looks like workers are scrambling to finish building some temporary stairs that will apparently be used to board a ship.

There's a fair amount of traffic on the Foss Waterway, too. Sailboats, yachts and small rubber craft are heading out into the bay.

Oh, and there's plenty of coffee here at the media center, Brian. Beth Sylves, who I know from her days at the Tacoma Dome, was gracious enough to bring me cup. That's probably not in her job description as a Tall Ships volunteer. But it was much appreciated.

The happiest days in a boat owners’ life, the old adage goes, are the day you purchase it and the day you sell it.

Today must be a close third place.

Hundreds of boats are already out on the water of Commencement Bay to catch a view of the Parade of Sail. More seem to appear every minute.

The marina near the Tacoma Yacht Club (above in photo) was still about half full, but dozens of people were preparing to launch. And if you think you can still snag a parking spot near a boat launch, think again.

Eagle pulled away from anchor near Qwest and Safeco Fields, and a Seattle fireboat led her, with a watery salute, to Alki Point.

Guest, including State Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen and Tacoma City Councilman Jake Fey, gathered under the shelter over the ship’s waist and ventured out into the drizzle.

They’re learning quickly that if you want to know anything about the ship or life aboard, you should ask a cadet or one of the crew.

As much as they love this ship, cadets and crew love to get off of it and see the world.

These are kids who scurry up ratlines and onto yardarms and fighting tops. Guess what they want to do here.

Right. Climb things.

They’ve heard we have something people enjoy climbing.

Cadet Alaina Kiskaddon just handed me a list of 30 cadets and crew who would like to hike Mount Rainier. Good days for them would be July 4 and 5. Ten interested cadets have liberty on July 5, and 20 have July 5 off.

Blog back to me, the sooner the better, if any group has something organized for these young people.

I’ve heard from quite a few cadets and crew that they’d like to go to a Rainiers game. I’m not sure if they’re in town, or if there’s a plan to get Eagle people to Cheney Stadium.

Again, blog back to me if you know anything.

Keep in mind that, if you get in trouble on the water someday, one of these Coasties might well be driving the helo that comes to save you.

It was a great view, but he won’t be able to tell his family about it.

One of my fellow passengers on the Vashon-Point Defiance ferry stood on the deck and admired the dozens of boats that are floating in Commencement Bay.

There’s one problem. He was supposed to be on the ferry a few hours ago. He overslept. And he doesn’t want to tell his wife.

“Oh well,” he laughed, “I guess I’ll just keep this to myself.”

A little bit of drizzle wasn’t going to keep David Derrer from bringing his two children, 10-year-old Simon and 8-year-old Grace, to catch one last glimpse of the Tall Ships.

“The Lady Washington is my favorite,” Grace said. “I really wanted to see it again.”

The family was in Dockton Park on Maury Island last night to view the ships, most of which anchored in Quartermaster Harbor. The Derrers about to leave town for a camping trip and won’t be able to attend Tall Ships Tacoma, so the three joined about 50 others in viewing the ships shortly before they began their sail southward.

About another 50 lined Vashon Highway south of Burton to snap photos or watch the ships through binoculars.

The weather wasn’t ideal for a proper sendoff. Light rain pelted the spectators, most of whom wore raincoats or carried umbrellas. The ships were especially tough to follow at times when they unfurled white sails that blended in with the fog.

That didn’t stop a few hardcore amateur photographers. About a dozen people stood on the shoulder of Vashon Highway to snap some shots as the ships left Quartermaster Harbor. Many had cameras with zoom lenses mounted atop tripods.

“It’s a hobby of mine,” Vashon’s Rob Chawkins said. “I’ll be able to get closer, get better shots here on the island than battling the crowds on Ruston Way.”

The desire to beat the Tacoma crowds – which are expected to number in the hundreds of thousands – drew SeaTac’s Lisa Freeney. She brought her 4-year-old daughter, Marie, with her to see the ships.

She was able to let Marie run around a bit near the playground on Dockton Park – something she said she wouldn’t be able to do on Ruston Way.

“Since I have a child with me,” she said, “this is the best place for me.”

GOT PHOTOS? Post them on our Tall Ships reader photo gallery.

It took me a couple drives up and down Ruston to find any place to park, but there is plenty of prime real estate open on the waterfront.

With the rain ending,more are showing up and setting up on the water. Cameras and binoculars are ready for when the ships appear.

I don't know how it is down on Foss Waterway, but this is a great spot to watch the ships come in. But there aren't near as many food options.

I just need to find some coffee first.

“Reveille! Reveille! Reveille!” piped through Eagle at 6 a.m.

Cadets and crew had a busy evening Wednesday, with receptions and leave in Seattle.

Seamen Travis Baker and Jesse Murphy, both 20, had been surprised by the warmth of their welcome.

Everywhere America’s Tall Ship goes, cities and the Coast Guard treat her well.

Murphy was grateful for the floating platform the Sector Seattle Coast Guard had brought to the ship. Baker was grateful for the Mariners.

“Someone at the reception last night handed me four tickets to the Mariners game last night,” he said. “They just walked up, handed them to me and said, ‘Here, just go.’”

Murphy was helping guests aboard.
The first of about 130 guests embarked at at 6:15 a.m. and would continue to do so until 8 a.m.

Baker, standing by the galley, shook hands with Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma as he and Carol Baarsma walked past the galley toward the foredeck

It’s drizzling in Seattle. Janet and I assured the officers over breakfast that, in the Northwest, there’s little difference between drizzle and sun.

Warrant Officer 4, Karyn Terry, Eagle’s naval engineer, has the 1,000 horsepower diesel Caterpillar D399 growling. Eagle will motor in.

Look for her to bring up the rear of the parade.

At 8:31 a whistle sounded from the bridge. The anchor is off the bottom. The last line is clear of the floating dock.

We're under way.

Bryan Cargill spent only three nights aboard a Tall Ship, but the 16-year-old from University Place was already talking like a seasoned sea veteran.

“They put me in charge of the portside jib sheet,” Cargill, a student at Curtis High School, said Wednesday. “We raised it, lowered it, luffed it.”

Luffing, Cargill explained, is when the crew pulls the sail and allows it to flutter in the wind.

“I hadn’t known that before this trip,” he said. “And I probably wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t signed up.”

He thanks Youth on Board for that.

Cargill served aboard the Zodiac and was among 47 teenagers in the program, a project of Metro Parks Tacoma, Tall Ships Tacoma, Boys & Girls Club of South Puget Sound and the Sea Scouts. The participants, all 14 to 17 years old, served aboard one of three Tall Ships to learn the basics of sailing. Few had spent any considerable time aboard a ship before.

The crew left Tacoma on Sunday to meet their ships in Victoria, B.C., where a Tall Ships festival was ending. They spent three nights on board, working like a full-time crew member. For some, that meant waking in the middle of the night to perform a watch. For others, it meant learning hand signals to communicate with other ships.

=> Read more!

Brent Mills’ two children had one goal when as they walked into the Quartermaster Harbor marina.

“They want to see some pirate ships,” he said. “They’re really excited.”

Mills, who lives in Seattle during the week and on Vashon Island on weekends, admits he’s a bit of a “boat guy.” He and his two children, 9-year-old Jackson and 7-year-old Zoe, spent four hours paddling from their weekend home to the marina yesterday in hopes of catching a glimpse of a few of the Tall Ships.

They didn’t see any. And the three drove to Dockton Park today.

“I’m still feeling it,” he said.

Zoe cut him off.

“Dad just let us ride most of the way here yesterday,” she said.

Almost a hundred people at mid-afternoon walked across the marina to try to find the best view of the ships. Dozens of other cars circled the street looking for a parking spot, and some resorted to leaving their cars on the shoulder of the road.

The view from the elevated parking lot was just fine for John and Julie Beeler. The Des Moines couple leaned against the side of their white GMC Yukon Denali and watched the Tall Ships sail into Quartermaster Harbor. John, 66, looked through binoculars as boat carried Youth on Board participants off the Zodiac and onto Argosy Cruises’ Spirit of Seattle.

Julie, 62, seemed just as content to soak up some rays as she watched from afar.

“It’s a beautiful day to be out here,” Julie said.

If you’re watching a reenactment of a cannon battle during Tall Ships Tacoma this week, just remember one thing: Those charges could’ve made some buttery, fluffy biscuits.

Tim Jovanovich and Avio Brooklyn spent much of Wednesday sitting aboard the Bounty of Krister and building cannon charges for the reenactments. They wrapped aluminum foil around a wooden cylinder to create the shape, removed the wood and filled the foil with about 30 cubic centimeters of black gunpowder.

That creates the boom. Bisquick creates the show.

“Bisquick’s a pretty good filler,” said Brooklyn, 15-year-old student at Vashon Island High School. “It makes more white smoke the charges explode.”

Tacoma Link will be running longer hours during the Tall Ships Festival, according to Sound Transit.

Transit officials want visitors to ride a bus to Tacoma, then hop on the Link or a shuttle to get down to the water.

Here's the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — July 2, 2008

Extra Tacoma Link service on tap for Tall Ships event

Tacoma Link will offer extended service hours during the Tall Ships Festival this weekend along the Thea Foss waterway in downtown Tacoma. Parking for the event will be at the Tacoma Dome, with easy access to the Tacoma Dome Link station at 424 E. 25th St.

On Thursday, July 3, Tacoma Link will run on its normal weekday schedule. On Friday through Sunday, July 4 through 6, Link will operate on a Saturday schedule, with the last train departing the Theater District Station at 11:10 p.m. On Monday, July 7, the last day of the Tall Ships Festival, Tacoma Link will operate on its normal weekday schedule.

Two downtown stops offer convenient access to the Tall Ships Festival entrances.
· Union Station at South 19th Street (walk to the festival across the Bridge of Glass)
· Convention Center at South 15th Street (walk to festival via the 15th Street ramp)

The Tall Ships Festival in 2005 brought record-breaking ridership to Tacoma Link. Numerous festival-goers are expected to use Tacoma Link again this year to explore the 32 sailing vessels featured in this year’s event.

Visitors from around the region are encouraged to take transit to the festival and avoid parking. Regular weekday Sounder service will run between Seattle and Tacoma on Thursday, July 3. Many ST Express, Pierce Transit, and other regularly scheduled transit services can take Tall Ships festival-goers to the Tacoma Dome Station where they can access Tacoma Link and shuttle service to the waterfront.

To get to Tacoma Dome Station:
· From downtown Seattle, take ST Express buses 590, 591, 592, and 594
· From SeaTac, Kent, Des Moines or Federal Way, take ST Express bus 574
· From Bonney Lake, Sumner or Puyallup, take ST Express bus 582
· From Lakewood, take ST Express buses 574 or 594

For more information about bus routes, connections, and Tacoma Link service, go to www.soundtransit.org

Capt. Christopher Sinnett first came aboard U.S.C.G. Barque Eagle as most Coast Guard officers do – as a cadet.

“I grew up in a military family,” Sinnett said in the ship’s wardroom Wednesday. “I understood and liked the military lifestyle. I was on the wrestling team and a competitive sailor.”

He’d looked at other military academies, but none of them had anything to compare to the ship he now commands.

“I was aware of Eagle and knew I wanted to get on board. I wanted to be on board under sail in a lot of wind, and to be climbing the rigging when the ship was moving underneath.”

He trained on her in the summers of 1979 and 1980, when the Iranian hostage crisis and the Mariel boatlift off Cuba dominated headlines.

“It was a very active time in world and Coast Guard affairs,” he said of the big picture.

For him, though, those summers were about the adventure of learning the ship and the teamwork required to sail and maintain her.

“At that point it did not mean as much to me as it does now,” he said. “The more life experience you get, the more you understand the history that lives on in Eagle.”

Eagle was built in 1936 as a sail training ship named the Horst Wessel.

“This was a propaganda stunt on the part of the Nazis,” Sinnett said. “Hitler chose the name.

Wessel and Hitler had fought together during World War I, and they remained friends.

“Horst Wessel had written a marching song that Hitler liked,” Sinnett said. “He made it the marching song of the German military. Before World War II, Wessell was killed by a jealous ex-boyfriend of the woman he was living with. The Nazis used that for propaganda, because the jealous boyfriend was a communist.”

Hitler and his cohorts were whipping up propaganda casting communists as the enemy, and Horst Wessell shot dead on his doorstep fit right in.

“It was that whole ‘a patriot of the revolution assassinated by the communists’ thing,” Sinnett said.

So hull No. 508 in the Blohm and Voss Shipyard was destined to be named for Hitler’s song-writing friend.

Hull No. 509 would be named for Otto Von Bismarck.

We’ve had British people come on board,” Sinnett said. “I take them aft, where the original construction still exists, and they learn that this ship was probably built within 100 yards of the Bismarck. They take this breath. They pause for a second when it hits them what that means.”

The Horst Wessel was a smokescreen as much as she was a sailing ship.

Under the treaty of Versailles, Germany was banned from building a warfighting navy.

“The reason the Germans were building sail training ships is they were prohibited from building naval warfighting vessels per the Treaty of Versailles after World War I,” Sinnett said. “The sail training ships were being used to train the sailors going into the warfighting arena. The original engine in here was the same type that was being installed in the U-boats when Hitler was illegally rebuilding the German navy. They were training U-boat engineers and sailors for their warfighting ships.”
During the war, the ship served mainly as a troop transport. It had anti-aircraft guns, which it fired at Allied planes. There are stories, but no record that it hit anything.

At war’s end, three of Hitler’s sail training ships remained to be claimed as war prizes.

“In 1946, the American team led by U.S.C.G Cmdr. Gordon McGowan found Eagle in the bombed out city of Bremerhaven,” Sinnett said. “They spent months working with members of the former German crew to get her back in working condition. She had deteriorated during the latter stages of the war. They got some of the crew out of POW camps. The Germans had to interpret the placards on the ship.

They sailed her back to the United States, encountering a massive hurricane along the way to New York City.

“Everybody worked together,” Sinnett said. “In 1946, they pulled into New York City with some of the sails in tatters, but the ship intact. They made some cursory repairs and finished the transit to the (U.S. Coast Guard) academy in New London. She started work immediately.”

Since then, the Coast Guard has reconfigured the berths, replaced the power plant and water and sewer systems. But the rigging, the masts and hull are original. Throughout the ship, there are tokens of her first life – photographs of her under construction and berthed in Bremerhaven, brass plates bearing her original name.

“What made Eagle a valuable training platform in her first days is the same thing that makes her valuable today,’ Sinnett said. “Technology changes. People don’t. The challenge of going to sea is the same for today for an 18- or 19-year-old as it was for a teen prior to WWII. It’s achieving personal goals and working together as a team to achieve the unit goals, which translates into accomplishing the mission. That’s what the American public wants. They want us to accomplish the mission.”

There’s one more lesson in Eagle’s history, Sinnett said.

“Where you start does not dictate where you end or what your journey is. Eagle started life as the Horst Wessel, working for what is arguably the most evil regime in the history of the planet, and has spent the last 62 years working for the United States, teaching others how to save lives and to conduct humanitarian missions.

You could get keel-hauled. Or you could get Raisched.

Bos’n Keith Raisch has served aboard Eagle, as he says, “a substantial period of time. Enough so that most officers today know my name.”

And not in a soft, cuddly way.

He is known for hurling obscure questions at cadets, and, when they do no know the answer, barking “GO FIND OUT!”

GFO, for short.

He is proud that cadets have put an acronym to his name: Recruited And Involuntarily Selected for Climbing and Hauling.

That means that if they flunk a pop quiz, or happen to be skylarking around the ship, he’ll find them something “challenging” to do.

Here’s a sample of things you’ll need to know if you run into Bos’n Raisch aboard Eagle:

Q: How many transverse water-tight bulkheads does Eagle have? What and where are they?

GFO: Eight. The ship is sectioned into segments to protect its water-tight integrity, which protects all aboard. A bulkhead is a solid steel wall that runs from side to side and from the keel to the main deck. They are at frames 10, 25, 37, 49, 63, 75, 90 and 107.

“Mariners all over the world stole the idea from the Chinese, who put them in junks,” Raisch said, giving you the opportunity for a bonus point.

Q: How many emergency escape scuttles or trunks does Eagle have? Where are they? And what are they?

GFO: A scuttle is a small circular hatch just big enough for a person to get through should the ship head for the bottom. Scuttles lead from any of the lower compartments where people live or work to the main deck or the weather deck.

Eagle has nine of them.

Q: What’s a sea painter?

GFO: It’s a rope used to position a small boat alongside the ship under the davits so it can be picked up, or to keep the boat alongside when it is launched.

Q: What does is mean to pay the devil?

GFO: In wooden ships, planks have caulking in between them. It was usually cotton and tarred oakum. On a long transit, as the hull would shrink and expand, the caulking would come out or leak.

“The stuff below the water they could not do anything about. The stuff above the water was easy,” Raisch said. “The one at the water’s edge was always very difficult to deal with. It became known as the devil. Replacing the caulking was known as paying the caulk, so for this particular plank, it was known as paying the devil. It was not uncommon to wind up between the devil and the deep blue sea.

So where is the influx of visitors to Vashon Island coming from?

Apparently not from the South Sound. Or at least not in the totally nonscientific poll I just took.

My sample set consisted of the eight people sitting at three outdoor tables at Casa Bonita, a Mexican restaurant in Vashon.

I managed to ask where they were from while they chowed down on enchiladas and other good stuff. Three are from Bellevue, three from Seattle, one from Kirkland and one from White Center.

So, South Sounders, where are you?

(Of course, if one is taking the ferry from Point Defiance, it might not be the wisest idea to drive past Quartermaster Harbor and into town just to drive south again to see the ships.)

The four-way intersection of Vashon Highway and Bank Road is the closest thing Vashon Island has to a commercial district. Still, it’s not quite busy enough to necessitate a traffic light; stop signs will do.

But dozens of cars – most heading southbound on Vashon Highway toward Quartermaster Harbor – jammed the intersection early this afternoon. It wasn’t quite Interstate 405 during rush hour, but the island’s residents noticed the swell in cars.

“It’s almost like a traffic jam,” Vashon resident James Robertson said. “It isn’t easy to figure out why, either.”

Before the white, fluttering sails of the ships come in tomorrow, the pointy, white tents of vendors are sprouting up on seemingly every inch of Foss Waterway's waterfront.

Set up in downtown Tacoma has been going on for four days now, and it is nearing crunch time before Tall Ships begins, Tall Ships spokesman Matthew Erlich said. And there is a lot more work to be done before everything is ready.

But is there a deadline?

"Well, it's when the event starts," he said.

It is hard not to respect all of the planning that went in to the event. Volunteers hastily drive up and down the waterfront, talking on radios in their Club Cars while trucks full of food and tents meander to their spot on the waterway.

I almost get hit by a tiny ice cream vending car while standing in front of a tent for an insurance company. Ironic.

It looks like Taste of Tacoma part deux, but beginning tomorrow, the main event comes in, bringing hundreds of thousands of people along.

At least the thousands will be well fed.
— Brian Everstine, The News Tribune

Peter VanVynck, left, with Carpenters Union Local 1797 in Renton, and John Absten, with Carpenters Union Local 470 in Tacoma work on a temporary gangway on the Foss Waterway, Wednesday, as preparations for Tall Ships Tacoma 2008 looms less than 24-hours away.

JOE BARRENTINE/The News Tribune

Jenny Davis had already beaten the crowds for a prime spot. That was the easy part.

The moon’s gravitational pull flustered her a bit more.

“If I sit here, I’ll have a great spot,” she told me. “But if the tides come up, then I’ll have to move. But is this low tide? High tide? I just don’t want to screw this up.”

The 52-year-old from West Seattle was trying to determine the perfect spot near Dockton Park upon which to plant a blue canvas camping chair. She has been waiting for this day – when the participating boats in the Tall Ships Tacoma festival pull into Quartermaster Harbor – for more than three years. She had planned to be on Vashon Island during the 2005 festival but caught a stomach bug and missed the entire event.

“I was so disappointed,” she said, clutching my right arm for emphasis. “So, so disappointed.”

That led to her early arrival this year. She was one of only a handful of people at the park which sits on the northwestern coast of Maury Island. The low tide had sucked away much of the water, leaving an expanse of gushy mud underfoot. The legs of Davis’ camping chair sunk in the muck, and her shoes were caked with the stuff.

She didn’t mind all that. She just didn’t want the water to rise again and rob her of what she believes will be the prime ship-viewing spot.

“I don’t live on the water,” she said, “so I’m not sure how to figure this out. But I’m going to make it happen.”

Tacoma's Murray Morgan Bridge will be raised at 7:30 a.m. Thursday and stay that way for five days, the Washington state Department of Transportation announced today.

But it's got nothing to do with the condition of the beloved but rusting span that DOT officials may lock in the upright position later this or early next year.

This particular opening will allow ships to navigate the Thea Foss Waterway during the Tall Ships festival without repeatedly raising and lowering the bridge, according to the press release.

The bridge was closed to vehicles in October, and only about 40 pedestrians per day are using it now, the DOT said.

To read the full release, click for more:

=> Read more!

All my life, I’ve been afraid of heights.

It’s a legitimate fear. Lots of people have it. But I’ve come to use it as an excuse. I’ve depended on it to keep me off of steep, narrow mountain trails, driving the Going To The Sun Highway in Montana’s Glacier National Park and scampering to the tall parts of tall ships.

Reporters can do that. Photographers can’t.

Janet Jensen, who is shooting the glorious pictures you’re seeing of Eagle, is, as she puts it, “not fond of heights.”

I had no idea. Any time she has needed the advantage of height for a shot, she had shimmied into a safety harness and, accompanied by a cadet, climbed up the ratlines and over into the tops.
She does it, she said, by using her professionalism to stifle her fears.

Reporters can take notes from just about anywhere, and I prefer deck level.

Lt. Chris Nolan has, from the start, assumed that I would, and probably should, climb the rigging. To do so would give me an idea of how cadets turn a challenge into a favorite part of their duty aboard this ship.

So, every evening, about an hour before sunset, he has reminded me that I should go up. Every evening, I have managed to become engrossed in a compelling interview until the sun’s gone down. Until Tuesday.

There it was, a big red ball, sinking into the Olympics. And there he was, Lt. Nolan, smiling, telling me I could do it.

I snapped and cinched myself into a harness under the tutelage of senior cadet Ron Vyas, 21. “You can do it,” he said.

The rules are simple, he said. Never put two feet on the same horizontal line at the same time. Never hold onto line. Trust only the cables running from the deck to the mast. Attach the harness clip to the rigging any time you stop.

“You can do it, ma’am,” Vyas said with the kind of gentle reassurance one does not expect from a 21-year-old.

He even had me believing it.

With Seattle’s skyline coming to light behind me, I stepped onto the ship’s rail and started climbing the ratlines at about one fifth of cadet speed.

The ratlines form a tall, skinny triangle made of cable and line. Thirty feet up, I clipped on to get my bearings. Around 40 feet up, the courses narrow, which meant my ladder changed shape.

“You can do it,” Vyas told me.

“You can do it,” Nolan said, looking down from the platform.

=> Read more!

Eagle was passing Seattle’s Shilshole Marina around 4 p.m. Tuesday. Small boats were gathering around her, and three retired and restored Coast Guard vessels were motoring in front of her.

Cadet Annette Boston darted over to her father, Larry Boston, of Oceanside, Calif.

“I’m going up to man the shrouds,” she said, and made for the mizzenmast.

Eagle motored into Seattle, just as she will into Commencement Bay. Her sails are massive, to give her speed and power. But because she is square-rigged, and so big, she does not have the maneuverability under sail to enter a confined passage with other vessels in the area.

So, when it makes a festive entrance, instead of setting sail, Eagle sets cadets.

Annette Boston joined the cadets who climbed the ratlines on all three masts, made their way out the yardarms and stood there as Eagle crossed Elliott Bay. Dozens more cadets climbed the ratlines and stationed themselves there.

Two helicopters, a big HH60J out of Astoria and a smaller HH65 from Port Angeles, flew by the ship in tandem.

Below them, U.S. Navy Admiral Jim Symonds of Navy Region Northwest, applied sunscreen, a wise precaution on a lovely day.

“Isn’t this absolutely amazing?” he said. “I had no concept of how big this ship would be. To see those young people going up those masts. It would not be me going up there.”

The Navy, he said, has no sailing ship as large big as Eagle.

“We do have Old Ironsides,” he said. “It is still in commission.”

Chief Electrician’s Mate Michael Barnthouse stood nearby, looking up. He’s been part of the way up a mast twice, and that was enough for him.

The cadets are different.

“They say you haven’t been on Eagle unless you’ve gone all the way to the top. They like it,” he said. “They’re fearless.”

And then they were down on Bos’n Keith Raischh’s shouted command: “On the fore! On the main! On the mizzen! Lay in and down!”

“That was a grand old time!” said one cadet, jumping back onto solid deck.

The helicopters circled. A Seattle fireboat passed by with a salute of spray. The crew dropped anchor.

“Thank you, Eagle!” shouted Jack Sullivan, commodore of the Seattle Yacht Club.

“Hip, hip, hurrah,” the crowd responded. “Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah! Eagle!”

Chasing down a moving Tall Ship is apparently a tough thing to do.

Photographer Joe Barrentine and I learned that the hard way today.

Our assignment seemed relatively simple: Go to Port Angeles, catch the crews shortly after they cleared customs, talk to some of the kids about the Youth on Board program and put together something for tomorrow’s paper. My job was to write the words; Joe was shooting stills and a video.

The problems started about as soon as we left Tacoma. The contacts I had on the three ships we were chasing didn’t pick up. No problem, I figured. We’d get to Port Angeles and meet up then.

Joe and I make a Starbucks our home base in Port Angeles. I got in contact with the captain of one of the boats. If we can meet them in an hour, he said, we could hop aboard and talk to the Youth on Board kids. The ship’s docked in Union Wharf, he said.

That’s in Port Townsend.

Joe and I pack up in a hurry and head back east. We were rushing against a tight deadline, and it seemed all of Jefferson County decided driving 10 mph under the speed limit on a highway was a good idea.

As we pull into Port Townsend, I receive a voicemail. (Not a call, mind you, but just a voicemail.) The captain of one of the boats said that the three ships have just left Port Townsend and were heading toward Dockton.

That’s on Maury Island.

The fastest way to Dockton? Back to Tacoma to catch the ferry to Vashon Island at Point Defiance Park. My bosses will love seeing a 240-mile commute to the park on my expense report.

But we made the trip, caught the ferry to Vashon Island and headed toward Dockton. We got out at the park, and there was nary a Tall Ship to be seen. I called another one of the captains. He said the wind hasn’t been great, and they want to make it as far as Port Madison tonight.

That’s on Bainbridge Island.

And even if we had met up with them, the ships were going to anchor down at sea. The best we could do is stand at the dock and wave.

So Joe and I are sitting in my car awaiting the ferry off Vashon Island. By the time I drop him off, I’ll log almost 300 miles. Joe shot one photo. I’ve written nothing of substance.

Not a bad day at the office.

Janet Jensen/The News Tribune

Eagle is off Edmonds, boarding a group of about 100 retired Coasties and Navy League members.

They’ve motored out to Eagle so they can be aboard for Eagle’s transit to Seattle, where she will anchor off the Coast Guard Station.

It will be a grand procession.

Cadets have hoisted the big American flag off the mizzen mast. Smaller Coast Guard vessels are joining the service’s signature ship. Rescue helicopters are buzzing.

And the show has not yet begun.

If you are in Seattle, or in a position to get there by 4 p.m , you will see Eagle joined by the Coast Guard Heritage Fleet.

Organized by Combatant Craft of America’s Chuck Fowler and Dan Withers, the parade will feature a restored buoy tender and two patrol boats.

CCA’s press release points out that CG-83527, an 83-foot patrol boat, was built in 1944 and served in Tacoma from 1945 to 1962. It spent 20 years a a live-aboard in California before CCA bought and restored it for a new career as living history in Puget Sound.

The 65-foot Blueberry was a buoy tender bult in Tacoima by the Birchfield Boiler & Shipbuilding Co. during World War II. She maintained navigational aids on inland waterways. Peter Whittier of Orcas Island bought and restored her., CCA said. She’s now owned by Mark Freeman of Fremont Boat Co. in Seattle.

The former Point Divide, built by the Coast Guard in 1962, will sail by in its current incarnation, Maritime Instructor. Serattle Community College owns the 82-foot former patrol boat and uses it in its maritime training program.

If you can get here, wave. We’ll all return the honor.

U.S. C.G Barque Eagle Bos’n (that’s boatswain to you, you sandpeeps) Keith Raisch is here to help you with your nautical verbiage needs.

He’s here to offer up, and translate, some of the favorite phrases you’re likely to hear aboard Eagle at port, under sail and under power.

We are typing in capitals, as all commands are delivered in a BOOMING SEA VOICE.

“RISE TACKS AND SHEETS!:

“It’s not one I like to give, but is the command to take in the foresail or the mainsail, collectively known as the courses. They are the lowest sail on each mast. We take the sail in when we have lost the wind and are going to motor, or as part of a tack.”

“EASE THE BRAILS AND INHAULS! HAUL AROUND ON THE OUTHAULS!”

“That is the command given to set the mizzen sails, upper or lower.”

“AVAST!”

“It’s the nautical way of saying ‘FREEZE!’ It stops everything.”

“UP BEHIND!”

“When there is a bunch of people on the line, or it gets to where they are working against you, calling “UP BEHIND!” gets them off the line so you can work it without that resistance.”

“ON THE T’GALLANT GEAR! SHEET HOME!”

“When the sail is ungasketed and just hanging in the lines, ‘SHEET HOME!” draws the leeches, or the sides of the sail, taut and begins setting the set.”

“WALK AWAY WITH THE HALYARD!”

“It’s the command given to do just what it says. Sailors are simple people. This command has all the folks line up, take hold and walk away with the halyard. The upper top yard weighs about two and a half tons, so by walking away, they are able to move it in a smooth fashion.”

“LIBERTY! LIBERTY! LIBERTY!”

“Your workday is done. You can get out and see the town and do whatever it is you want to do to play. Within limits.”

Janet Jensen/The News Tribune

Monday night, as darkness brought out the lights in Port Angeles and on the coast of Vancouver Island, Eagle motored in U.S. waters. I stood on the deck as long as I could, watching the cadets on the fo’csle keep watch.

On the waist, cadets were studying, reading, pressing cell phones to their ears, doing chin-ups and push-ups and jumping rope.

At the helm, four cadets and a seaman bundled into water- and wind-proof gear stood at three wheels and steered the ship.

In my stateroom, Food Service Chief Leta Gibbons was gracious when I woke her up. Who but a Coastie would be nice to a stranger bumbling around an unaccustomed space?

If an alarm sounds in the middle of the night, she advised me, I should wait in my rack until she is dressed, on deck in a position to save my life. How often do you find that attitude in a roomie?

Clambering up the ladder to my rack, I was reminded that I have all the agility and skill of a garden slug. Lt. Chris Nolan has offered me the opportunity to climb the rigging. We’ll see.

At night, we leave a red light glowing on the overhead. There is no outside light. The ship rolls a bit with the seas, and the engine, trite as it sounds, is a lullaby.

I slept right through reveille Leta had to remind me that if I wanted breakfast, it would not come to me, and it would be gone by 7:30 a.m.

“Good morning, shipmates,” Capt. Sinnett greeted us over the ship’s address system.

“Shipmates.”

What a fine concept.

After a breakfast of fresh fruit, strong coffee, perfect eggs and pancakes, we mustered on the waist of the ship at 8 a.m.

“Bring the chocolate,” Leta had told me.

Muster would be an ideal time give cadets and crew an advance taste of Tacoma hospitality. I’d bought 60 pounds of Brown & Haley rocas, barks and Mountain Bar boo boos as a token of the warmth with which we will welcome them. It’s what any of us would do, given the chance.

The cadets, especially, like you already.

The morning started in fog, and the cadets were alerted to the approach of another Coast Guard cutter, the BOUTWELL.
As it drew near, they manned the starboard rail and stood at attention. On a whistle signal, they saluted as the two ships passed. Crew aboard BOUTWELL returned the courtesy. The long-standing naval tradition is called “rendering honors.”

Minutes later, on the port side, two hummingbirds flirted alongside Eagle for perhaps five minutes.

Cadets dispersed to duties across the ship.

“We’re scrubbing the waterways for the guests who will be on board,” said Laura Delgado, 18, of Mission, Tex.

“We do board preps for every port,” added Jenna Carpenter of Cullowhee, N.C. “Cleaning, Brasso-ing, Making the ship pretty.”

Pretty, Jenna, is an understatement.