Tall Ship Festival 8.10.08

Well, we've had a busy week! Seems we've been gone each day almost all day! Dr's visits, shopping, packing, it's been nuts. A crazy week for sure. This weekend though, we volunteered for the Tall Ship Festival that comes into town every 3 years. We sponsored the Californian three years ago and they are back in town.



There were meetings ahead of the arrival, and the ship arrived on Wednesday. We had one person to help us with the Californian but luckily, they didn't need much help. We were on hand every evening as the Californian participates in Battle Reenactments and the public could purchase tickets. On Sunday, we were invited to go with them! Woohoo! We love getting out on the water....but what a treat to go on a 129ft Tall Ship and participate in a battle with 4 other ships.

There was a total of 8 Tall Ships in the harbor - the Californian

The Lynx

The Bounty

Irving Johnson

Spirit of Dana Point,

Curlew

Kaisei, & one we can't remember the name of. The Irving Johnson was the ship that ended up on the beach here about 2 years ago - the heart wrenching ship that was being tossed on the beach. They finally got her off of the sand bar, towed her into the yard and spent a couple million dollars fixing her up. And she was back! The other cool ship was the Bounty of 'Mutiny of the Bounty' fame! It was the actual ship that was built for the movie. It was pretty impressive, though smaller than I imagined.

We left the dock around 5pm and we went out of the harbor. We travelled up & down the coast, dodging other tall ships that kept shooting at us! haha. We figure we 'won' the battle as we came back in 1st.

The cool part though was about 30 minutes into the sail, the captain called us back with him and we got to hang there the entire trip. We even had the opportunity to steer the boat during the maneuvers. It was a beautiful sail - we were out for about 3 hours - the seas were fairly calm, the wind perfect. We had a wonderful time but it just makes us miss our boat that much more!

We're headed to Texas on Tuesday! We've been so busy getting everything packed, purchased, & loaded. Whew...!!

More to follow...
Rene