Come sail away

A floating caravan of wonders will greet visitors to Tacoma from July 3 through 7 as the international sailing event Tall Ships Tacoma Festival 2008 takes over the waterfront. As part of the American Sail Training Association’s Tall Ships Challenge, tours and sailing adventures will abound aboard the visiting vessels.

On shore, along a one-and-a-half mile stretch of Dock Street, three themed villages – Northwest Passage, Trade Winds and Treasure Cove – will host five days of entertainment, food, kids’ activities, crafts, vendors, information and plenty of pirates. Frequent shuttles will run from south to north on Dock Street.

At the south end, beneath the SR 509 bridge, historic re-enactments will take place throughout each day, offering a view of what life was like for sailors during the Age of Exploration.

Perhaps the biggest coup for the festival is the U.S. Coast Guard’s signing on to send its official training vessel, the Eagle.

Known as “America’s Tall Ship,” the 266-foot, three-masted barque is used as a seagoing classroom for Coast Guard cadets. It has not been on the West Coast in more than a decade.

One of four Class A vessels slated to appear at the festival (as determined by length and the amount of sail carried), the Eagle is home-ported at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. Built in Germany in 1936, it was used by the Nazis to train navy cadets and taken by the United States as a war prize 10 years later.

The Eagle is the only square-rigged sailing ship in U.S. government service.

Another festival star, the Niña, is considered the most historically accurate replica of one of the three ships on which Christopher Columbus sailed the Atlantic in 1492.

Constructed with 15th-century tools, the Niña makes clear the courage that was needed to sail such a vessel across thousands of miles of ocean to the New World.

More history comes to life aboard the 1960 replica of the HMS Bounty, built for the movie “Mutiny on the Bounty,” starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian of the rebellious crew that overthrew Captain Bligh.

The Brigantine Kaisei, which means “Ocean Planet” in Japanese, was launched as a way to promote global community, a mission it continues from its home in California.

Among the other 28 or more Class B and C traditionally rigged sailing vessels will be the Bounty of Krister, a replica of the vessel on which Captain Bligh was set adrift from the Bounty; the Hawaiian Chieftain, designed as a 65-foot trading packet for use between the Hawaiian Islands; and the Lady Washington, the official tall ship of the State of Washington.

The world-class event will launch with a Parade of Sail the morning of July 3, when all of the ships unfurl their sails and head from Quartermaster Harbor on Vashon Island toward Point Defiance into Tacoma, turning to sail parallel to Ruston Way.

Last in line will be the Eagle, which is scheduled to anchor in the position closest to the opening of Foss Waterway.

Although the parade begins about 10 a.m. and will last four to five hours, for best viewing – along Ruston Way and at Point Defiance – plan on a very early arrival. Parking will be at a premium.

Boaters will be able to view the event from the water, but several Coast Guard safety zones and an extreme low tide that day will limit where nonfestival boats may anchor and sail.

If, like the English Poet Laureate John Masefield, all you “ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,” schedule your trip to the Festival to include the Fourth of July.

You’ll not only have tall ships, but stars and stripes – and fireworks – to steer them by at Tacoma’s daylong Freedom Fair on the nearby Ruston Way waterfront.

The Freedom Fair was selected as one of the nation’s 10 best fireworks shows by USA Today, and as one of the top 10 in the world by the Discovery Travel Channel.

Throughout the Tall Ships festival, visitors can easily visit the four great museums within walking distance from the Tall Ships site: the Washington State History Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Museum of Glass and Foss Seaport Museum.

This is the second time Tacoma has hosted this prestigious event. Shortly after Tall Ships Tacoma 2005, visiting crews voted the community “Tall Ship Port of the Year.”

That certainly was helped by the fact that the owners of a Tacoma antique shop loaned their sunflower yellow 1955 Buick Century, built on a Roadmaster chassis, to visiting sailors from around the world to drive about town.