VICTORIA, B.C., Canada — Like live ornaments on huge trees, Mexican sailors manned the yardarms as their colorful ship entered James Bay with a style befitting the Tall Ships Victoria festival.
Not since the earlier days of this Hudson's Bay Company settlement have large sailing vessels been so dominant. Twenty six boats, from the minute 20-foot 6-inch Trekka that carried John Guzwell on a four-year circumnavigation, to the massive 356-foot Russian school ship Pallada, were tucked in the inner harbor.
In addition to the spectacular tall ships like the Lady Washington, which starred in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean," Victoria hosted about two dozen speedy sailboats competing in the fifth running of the Cadillac Van Isle 360 International Yacht Race. Victoria was plumb packed with nautical types touting waterline length, sail area and speed over water as well as the historical significance of wind-powered ships.
Lin Pardey, world cruiser, and author with her husband Larry of a raft of books chronicling their adventures aboard their home-built boats Serafyn and Talesian, was among the 250,000 spectators taking in this first stop on the west-coast tall ships tour. She was in Victoria restoring another wooden boat. "Now we have wooden boats to work on in both hemispheres (Victoria and New Zealand)," Pardey said.
From here, Tall Ships raced to Tacoma, Wash.; Vancouver, Canada and Port Alberni on Vancouver Island before heading down the coast to San Francisco, Oxnard, Los Angeles and San Diego, (Aug. 17-21).
All the action began here.
Just getting to Victoria was an adventure. The 85-foot gaff-rigged schooner R. Tucker Thompson, based in Whangerei, New Zealand, required engine assistance from the U.S. Coast Guard near Hawaii.
Making the trip faster than the projected 35 days, the Russian school ship Pallada covered the almost 5,000-mile distance from Vladivostok in 33 days and encountered some interesting weather off Vancouver Island while cruising around waiting for the Tall Ships festival to begin, according to 19-year-old cadets Gena Grisha and Liseyenko Kondrikov, who commented through an interpreter.
Two storms had the huge, fully rigged steel ship rolling 45 degrees from side to side, making the trip difficult for the 97 marine cadets, six officers and 43 crew aboard the 3,000-ton vessel built in Gdansk, Poland in the 1980s. Named for Greek goddess Pallas Athena, Pallada carries 26 sails on three masts.
It has clocked an impressive 18.7 knot boat speed. Pallada was the largest ship here and its 22-foot draft required high tide to get the ship into and out of the harbor.
Canadians were represented well at Tall Ships. Her Majesty's Canadian Ship (HMCS) Oriole, a 102-foot marconi-rigged Canadian Navy sail training ketch, which also competed in the first legs of the Van Isle 360, was on display. Both boats of the Victoria-based Sail and Life Training Society, the Pacific Swift and Pacific Grace, were also nearby taking on visitors.
The 111-foot square topsail schooner Swift was constructed at Expo '86 in Vancouver, while the 138' topsail schooner Grace was built here at the S.A.L.T.S. yard and finished in 1999. Both ships take 13- to 25-year-old sailors on training cruises.
Cruising on Oriole is considered good duty in Canadian Navel circles. Built in 1921 to be the flagship of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club of Toronto, Oriole was commissioned by the Navy in 1952 and has sailed on the west coast for more than half a century to school Canada's sailors. The distinctive 92-ton ship has 15,700 square feet of sail including a huge spinnaker emblazoned with an Oriole.
Cadets such as Erin McEachern, from Kelowna, B.C. who is in her third year at the Royal Military Academy at Kingston, Ontario, crew the fast ship. She will serve on the boat until August with five staff members and 15 other cadets as crew.
Oriole sailed in the 1997-98 Australian Tall Ships event and defeated 18 other boats to win the 2000 Victoria-Maui race — sailing 2,308 nautical miles in 12 days, 19 hours.
"Oriole was pretty," commented Holladay, Utah, resident Cortney Achter. "Somebody told me it was the crew. I liked the Mexican uniforms the best — they wore white Chuck Taylors (tennis shoes)."
Her favorite crew? "Probably the Russians, with their (blue) eyes," Achter concluded. The Russians were equally impressed with Victoria, "It is pretty, people are friendly and it is clean," one sailor said.
Blarney Pilgram, North Star of Herschel Island and Thane were among the other local boats participating.
Each evening, the Lady Washington and the Lynx, a 122-foot square topsail schooner modeled after a privateer from the war of 1812, sailed out for a one hour pretend gun battle off the Dallas Road waterfront.
Volunteer Gale Victoria Bryant explained the difference between the bar shot, the chain shot and the grape shot used by privateers and navel vessels in 17th century sea battles to spectators aboard the Lynx. Bryant explained the bar and chain rounds were used to blast away an enemy's rigging, while the grape shot was anti-personnel. Sailor Kristin Roth scrambled aloft to inspect the rigging, or perhaps just to get a better view of the crowd elbowing into the waterfront.
Victoria, B.C. clearly knows how to throw a party. Wharf Street was blocked to traffic and spectators filled the area curb-to-curb. Some waited in lines to board the historic ships while youngsters attended Ann Bonny's Pirate School. "Always looking for new volunteers. I need more ships in my fleet," Bonny laughed as she drew a pen-and-ink tattoo on a young swashbuckler.
Nearby, Nick Kaminski and shipwright Eric Sadilands were fitting planks to a wooden dory in a Cowichan Bay Maritime Center boat-building demonstration.
In addition to tall ships, James Bay was alive with float planes, the Coho and Victoria Clipper ferries, visiting sail and power boats and kayakers like Graeme and George Duncan, with 2 1/2 year old Anusha, getting a water-level view of the festival.
Buskers, the street entertainers this town is famous for, played to rapt audiences during the festival. Foreign sailors walked all over town taking in the sites. Courtney Achter lined up a crew of Russians for a photo in front of McDonalds. In the Elephant and Castle pub, Mexican sailors, off the 270-foot three-masted barque Cuauhtemoc, cheered every goal as their national soccer team competed in a big-screen-televised game against Argentina.
The Mexicans left a bit dejected when Argentina prevailed 6-5 in a shootout.
Hosted by the American Sail Training Association, Tall Ships is scheduled for the east coast, the Baltic and the Pacific before returning here in 2008.
The Van Isle 360 racers began their 10th and final leg off the Victoria breakwater and finished at Nanaimo. Bob and Barb Brunius' J 120 Time Bandit, which also won this year's Swiftsure race, sailed to the division-one victory. The fastest elapsed time went to Pat McGarry's Formula 40 catamaran, Dragonfly, which covered the 580 nautical-mile race in 79 hours, 7-minutes, three seconds.
Dragonfly was docked in front of the Empress Hotel with Trekka nearby. Dragonfly, which has sailed faster than 30 knots, is a solid contrast to the smaller boats and even the larger tall ships. However, the historic tall ships are clearly an attraction.
Craig Hansell learned to sail on a Ranger 23 at Bear Lake before moving on to the Great Salt Lake and the Pacific Northwest. A 27-year veteran sports/recreation writer and photographer with The Salt Lake Tribune, Hansell is busy in the pursuit of retirement — with occasional relapses, such as this story.