PORT TOWNSEND — A crowd warmly greeted the Lady Washington with applause early Tuesday evening when she moored at City Dock, one of four tall ships that spent the evening on layover en route to the 2005 Tacoma Tall Ships Festival this week.
“Welcome home,” one onlooker was overheard saying to Washington state’s own Grays Harbor-based “Lady.”
She was one of hundreds gathered on the city’s piers to see close-up the glory and seaworthy majesty of tall ships.
Many milled about the shorelines of Port Townsend on Tuesday, hoping for a glimpse of a tall ship.
Others watched from the shores of Point Hudson and Point Wilson, binoculars in hand, to catch a glimpse of the sailing ships sailing by.
The sailing ships left Port Angeles Harbor on Tuesday morning after spending the night following customs inspections the day before.
The nearly two dozen sailing ships — including one longer than a football field — completed a popularly successful festival before more than 30,000 in Victoria last weekend, then sailed across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Port Angeles port of entry late Monday afternoon.
Tuesday afternoon and early evening, Port Townsend waterfront onlookers got their turn, as one by one the classic vessels gracefully drifted in, some even under the power of a gentle breeze blowing through Admiralty Inlet on an overcast, muggy and cool day.
Fast track to Tacoma
The tallest of the tall ships, the Pallada, a 356-foot full-rigged, steel-hulled vessel from Vladivostok, Russia, and the Mexican schooner Cuauhtemoc, a 270-footer from Acapulco, were on the fast track to Tacoma because they required paid pilots to guide them from Port Angeles Harbor past Marrowstone Point to Puget Sound.
The Cuauhtemoc, a square-rigger with more than 100 crew, had been tentatively scheduled to drop anchor in Port Townsend Bay until plans changed at the last minute.
But in keeping with the Key City’s historic image as a maritime provisioning center, representatives of the Northwest Maritime Center and Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce worked together to make sure the crews of the Lady Washington, the schooner Privateer Lynx of Newport Beach, Calif., the Bill of Rights of Los Angeles and the R. Tucker Thompson of Bay of Islands, New Zealand, were treated first class.
“We feel we’re a ship’s town and we wanted to make sure that the ships are taken care of,” said Aletia Alvarez, programs director for the Northwest Maritime Center of Port Townsend.
“We’re rolling out the red carpet for them because we love the crews and love the boats.”
Alvarez, along with Tim Caldwell, Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce general manager, put together a phone tree to arrange transportation to grocery stores for crew members and arranged showers for them at Port Townsend Athletic Club on Madison Street downtown.
A public reception for the tall ship crews was also thrown at the Brion Toss rigging loft at Point Hudson Marina.
“It’s really been a great event,” said Alvarez, who was attending the reception Tuesday night.
“We put on a great Wooden Boat Festival and want to draw them in as they come through town,” said Alvarez, whose Northwest Maritime Center has merged with the Wooden Boat Foundation, which puts on the September festival.
Alvarez said she hoped the crews would see Port Townsend as a respite in between the two busy tall ship festivals in Victoria and Tacoma.