July 2010 the tall ships are coming to Duluth and we are very excited. We have already reserved our spot at the local marina for the week long event. There is a chance we will have the opportunity to be in the flotilla which accompanies the tall ships as they make their way through the Duluth canal during the Parade of Sail. We will be easy to spot, because our little boat will be readily mistaken as a boat bumper someone inadvertently dropped overboard from one of the ships or perhaps a ring-billed gull taking in the sights as he languidly swims about. The ships are huge! One of the visiting ships, the US Brig Niagara for instance, has a mast height of 118′ over the keel. That’s 91′ feet taller than ours, eek!

The Tall Ships® Duluth 2010 festival starts Wednesday, July 28 with the ships arrival and lasts through Tuesday, August 3 ending with their departure. The Parade of Sail will be on Thursday, July 29th. Tickets to the event are not for sale yet, but the official website says that they will be soon. There will be tours and day sails aboard the various vessels. We are especially excited about the latter. This year the city of Duluth is planning on a doubling of attendees, which was numbered at 125,000 visitors in 2008 when the tall ships were there for the first time. Unfortunately for us, we learned of the event too late for us to go. There will be music, a performance of The Pirates of Penzance by UMD School of Fine Arts and much more. We are very much looking forward to this event.

[audio:http://www.boatdejour.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Major-Generals_Song.mp3|titles=Major-General’s_Song]

Henry Lytton as the Major-General (1919).

This also got me to thinking about how strange it is that while we live less than 500 miles from the geographical center of North America in Rugby, ND, we have access to the world in less than a two hour drive from our home. If we want to sail the world via the Gulf of Mexico, we can travel down the Mississippi River like Capt. Jay Luck did two years ago aboard his double-ender shortly after we chartered a day sail with him and our family. Conversely, if we want to do the ICW route we can start our voyage in Duluth, MN and travel to the Atlantic via the Great Lakes. This is all just fuel for the fire, so to speak, as we dream on about our future cruising life. This summer we are excited to try sailing on Lake Superior for the first time and spending more time on Lake Pepin as well.

The plans for this years festival include 8 tall ships, only four of them being listed as of now on their official website. They include US Brig Niagara, Pride of Baltimore II, Roseway and S/V Denis Sullivan. The two returning ships are US Brig Niagara and Pride of Baltimore. The tall ships will also be visiting the city of Green Bay, WI who’s website lists some more ships, I’m not ready to start speculating about whether the same ships will be coming to Duluth or not, however HMS Bounty, of Captain Bligh fame, is one of the ships listed, so we can only hope she will be arriving in Duluth at the end of July as well. Of course this would be the Bounty II of the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty film and not the original which was burned January 23, 1790 on Pitcairn Island in what is now know as Bounty Bay.

We will be following the plans for this exciting event as the summer progresses and look forward to the festivities. I will post further updates as they become available. This will be our first big event aboard our sailboat and we are excited. We will be there for four nights which should prove interesting on our Precision 18. Oh well, little fish in a big pond as they say.