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For we aboard Pride of Baltimore II, OpSail Baltimore was deeply marred when the ship was struck by a tug boat while laying at her berth at the Inner Harbor. Aside from the damage to the steering gear, months of hard labor preparing the vessel to look her very best for this event were undone. Rather than opening the ship to the eager throngs on the dock, we were compelled to close the ship to effect repairs during our remaining days in Baltimore. This disappointed not only ourselves, but many of the visitors as well. But the work got done and when Pride II sailed out a few days later, there was no visible sign of the mishap having ever occurred. If I could, I would wish the whole thing away. But in the absence of that option, I don't mind saying that we are proud of the way we were able to come back from it and meet all our remaining obligations.

Every cloud has a silver lining, as the saying goes, and so did this particular cloud. For one, the crew recognized the gravity of the situation and pulled together with a will that surpassed ordinary professionalism. Bringing brains, brawn, and a bit of luck to bear, Pride II was able to take her appointed position at the head of the Parade of Sail departing Baltimore. This is an honor not likely to come our way for many years.

Mayor Martin O'Malley joined us as far as Fort McHenry.

Another silver lining lies in the interest and concern that the incident generated. For days, the media swarmed over us. We were the top story of OpSail Baltimore. CNN carried the story as far as the West Coast, and local television stations covered us daily. Speaking more to the heart, however, was the spontaneous outpouring of concern from ordinary folk on the dock. All sorts of people paused to inquire as to whether we were all right and if the repairs were going okay. "How is our Pride?" they asked. When told that we working to make the parade, people invariably gave us a big "thumbs up" or punched a fist skyward in support. This sort of unofficial encouragement from ordinary citizens was perhaps the best part about getting hit by a tug boat in our home port. It also reminded us that people really do care deeply about "their Pride."

We had a pleasant day for the parade out of Baltimore. I am sure that everything went exactly according to plan but, of course, the head of the line is not much of a vantage point. The Simon Bolivar had an engine failure and had to anchor. Always something, eh? Spectator craft were thick along the channel. Once below the Key Bridge and free of the straitjacket of parade formation, the fleet scattered to the winds, some heading south for the ocean, some heading north for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The local boats headed back to Baltimore.

Off to New York

Pride II headed north and soon met up with the Harvey Gamage. The focsle of this venerable schooner has been home to many a sailor over the years, myself included. Over the radio, it was quickly agreed that the two schooners would head for the Sassafras River to take anchorage and pass the night in one another's company. Ships passing in the night, so to speak. Evidently our divergence from the prescribed road to New York City was a source of alarm and consternation for some nearby pleasure boaters. No sooner had we left the channel but an agitated voice called the Coast Guard to notify them that not one, but two, tall ships had left the channel and were heading for the Sassafras River. After a prolonged pause, the Coast Guard replied, "Sir, we have no control over where the tall ships go." One anxious boater radioed to another, "I sure hope they know where they're going." Before the entire boating community of the upper Chesapeake Bay flew into a panic and tried to tow us back into the channel, I notified the boater of our intention to anchor for the night. The radio went quiet.

The crew of the Harvey Gamage paid us a visit once all was squared away. We swapped news, yarns, and scuttlebutt, the way you do on a summer's eve, swinging to the hook. Chris Cleary, who sailed as Second Mate aboard Pride II last year, is an officer on the Gamage now. With miles to go before our next fandango in New York, it was an early night. This was just as well because a squall ripped through at about midnight while we were tidebound and had us all up and hopping about in the rain for awhile. In the process, we discovered a few new leaks in the deck in the area where the tug boat hit. Have to bump down the caulking and get some fresh pitch on those.

The Gamage doesn't have as long legs as the Pride does so, when we arose the next morning, there was no sign of our companion. Pride II proceeded northward. We caught a westerly breeze for going up the Bay, we caught a fair tide for going through the C&D Canal, and we caught the Gamage on the other side. By late morning, the wind had shifted into the northwest. While still fair, it presented us with an awkward sailing situation. Delaware Bay is a wide body of water, but the navigable part is quite constricted. The channel runs northwest-southeast and, with twelve and a half feet of draught, you need to stay in it. But to stay in the channel with a nor'wester, Pride II was compelled to sail almost dead downwind. Though this is neither efficient nor comfortable, after weeks of contrary winds, or no wind at all, we were not of a mind to complain. A fat lot of good it would have done us anyway.

Looking on the bright side, this peculiar point of sail offered us the rare justification for setting both stuns'ls at once. This we did and it made for an unusual sight, a stuns'l out on each side like big old elephant ears catching the breeze. At the less-than-awesome rate of three knots, we toddled down Delaware Bay toward the sea. Our friend, the Harvey Gamage, dwindled astern, her rig standing like the stalk of a distant wildflower as the sun loped westerly.

When morning broke, we were upon the open ocean. The shallows, shoals, mud puddles, and marshes of the Chesapeake are astern. Lovely as the Chesapeake is, it is a confining body of water for a vessel like Pride of Baltimore II. When sailing the Bay, it always feels slightly unnatural, like being on your best behavior. Well, we've been sailing the Bay for two months and now we're out on the ocean and, baby let me tell you, it's like school's out! Pride's keel slices the briny deep, cooled and cleansed by the Atlantic. Under full sail, she marches past the Jersey beaches. The guest crew and the regular crew are totally into it. I find myself wishing it were another hundred miles to New York.

For the people ashore, it is the weekend. Pleasure boaters scuttle out from the coastal inlets to gawk. We aren't the only sailing ship coming up the coast, so viewing the fleet has become a bit of a spectator sport.

OpSail New York - a Mixed Adventure

Three days after leaving Baltimore, we took anchorage in Sandy Hook Bay. The pleasure boat traffic swarmed around us like hornets. We tended to the leaks in the deck and everyone pitched in cleaning up the ship and making everything Bristol for the big Independence Day celebrations in New York. The following day, we shifted to the scenic container terminal at Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. In the midst of a vast maritime transportation machine, with nothing but containers and cranes as far as the eye could see, one is reminded of the warehouse scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. But the folks at the Maersk Terminal took very good care of us during our brief stay.

As you may imagine, Independence Day at New York went exactly according to plan. The day opened murky with humidity. Visibility wasn't much more than a half a mile. The parade formed up south of the Verrazano Narrows and the Eagle led. The haze didn't afford much of a vista of the ships.

We fired a cannon salute while passing the Presidential review platform on the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy. Evidently we weren't supposed to do that.

We fired another salute at the Statue of Liberty and again while passing the Battery at the foot of Manhattan.

Part way up the west side of Manhattan, the entire fleet began to come about in what appeared to be a more or less spontaneous decision to truncate the procession well short of the designated turning point at the George Washington Bridge. Pride II had sponsorship obligations back in New Jersey, so this turn of events was actually beneficial for us, but the poor folks waiting upriver must have been disappointed when the ships never came.

The flyover by the Stealth bomber stands out as the highlight of the day. Despite having seen photos of it, the sight of this thin, black, triangular blade corkscrewing past at some ungodly rate of knots was utterly jaw-dropping. If I hadn't seen it myself, I would swear that such a thing could only be the product of the special effects gurus in Hollywood.

New York was an awkward stay for the Pride. When we finally did get to Manhattan, it was to discover that our assigned berth was utterly exposed to river traffic. The ship jerked uncomfortably at her docklines for three days and took a hit on the rail. The tide was too extreme to comfortably handle visitors and, due to wakes from other vessels, tending fenders was a continuous activity. A great many of the ships found themselves in similar straits and left early. Nice fireworks, but it was a relief to be gone.

Journeying up the East River is always exciting. If one thinks of the Hudson River as New York's front yard, then the East River is her backyard, and therefore it is with a touch of the voyeur that one ascends the East River and gazes through New York's rear window. Coming up the river, I put the coals to her so that we might beat the ebb tide at Hell Gate, the place where the East River, the Harlem River, and Long Island Sound converge and create one hell of a current. Our timing was good and we got through the Gate with the faintest whiff of a fair current remaining. Above the Gate, the navigator enters some sort of nether world of human endeavor come to naught. The ship transits an abandoned urban wilderness, a forgotten zone, an Outback of New York, some sort of industrial Badlands occupied by the rusting hulks of retired Staten Island Ferries and the crumbling piers of commerce long gone. Rows of loose, decayed pilings march into the sea from the hollow brick shells of derelict warehouses like broken teeth hanging in the maw of a dusty old skull. Poison ivy overruns and chokes a cluster of fine old buildings on an abandoned island. The masonry quietly disintegrates and, brick by brick, the dilapidated grandeur is brought to the ground entire. On the starboard hand is the "corrections" facility at Rikers Island, thinly wrapped in shimmering, new razor wire, gleaming in the summer heat. And they're not correcting homework in there. So utterly transformed by human hands is this wasteland that a more natural state is unimaginable.

Great Sailing in Long Island Sound

Eventually, we come to Kings Point, home of the United States Merchant Marine Academy. We enter Long Island Sound. The jagged shore becomes a coast again and it gives way to a softness and a greenery that bespeaks the approach of New England. It is late afternoon. The sky is clear and blue. The way the sun is shining on the water is nothing short of perfection. It is pleasantly cool, causing everyone to put on long sleeves and remember fall. A fresh nor'west breeze has been beckoning all day long and now we oblige it by turning to the east for our run up the Sound. Off Executioners Rock, all hands turn to and make sail. The fores'l and stays'l are set. The main goes up, followed by the jib. The engines are cut. We are finally clear of all buildings, bridges, tank farms, and towers. The breeze is clean. We are making 10 knots and not even trying. I call out the towns on the Connecticut shore like a train conductor on the commuter line: Greenwich; Darien; Stamford; Norwalk; next stop, Rowayton. We are charging up the sound like Casey Jones coming around the bend and it feels great.

The Cook, Andy Jackson, is from Rowayton so he's up on deck hopping around and looking through the binoculars at the region of his youth. Westport; Greens Farms; Southport; next stop, Fairfield.

We get into a duel with some flash yacht out of a local marina that thinks she can outsail us. We pass her to windward, and only then do we set the foretops'l. You know, like, just to let 'em know. My buddy, Mac Dew, is aboard as we come up on our hometown. The palms of his hands are being steadily converted into hamburger from hauling on lines. Like the old Schlitz ad says, you gotta go for the gusto or don't go at all. Then again, you never see Schlitz anymore, do you?

The sun is getting low. The light is a radiant golden hue, like at the end of a nature program. The breeze is gradually dropping away, but it is reserving the right to surprise us with the occasional forceful gust as we pass a river mouth, or some such oddity of geography. The wind is in the north now, directly off the land. This allows us to sail right up the limit of deep water with relative safety. I can pick out houses and individual trees that I know. You can spend a lifetime in a place, but until you've approached it from sea, you don't really know it.

We anchor for the night off my hometown, Fairfield. The hook goes down as the last light escapes from the sky. The anchor watch is set. It is the end of another very long day on Pride of Baltimore II, but at least from today we take the memory of a first rate sail on a gorgeous summer day that felt like fall.

New London, CT

The next day at 0630, the anchor broke free of the bottom and the bow paid off to the east. Miracle of miracles, the forecast held true, which meant more of the same: north, northwest, 15 to 20 knots, clear. Perfect for a romping sail to New London. In the course of the day, we sighted a few other sailing ships making their way up the sound, but mostly we traveled alone.

I had allowed for an average speed of 4.5 knots to get to New London by a decent hour, but here we were making 8.5. Our early arrival allowed time for tacking drill off the mouth of the Thames River before entering the harbor.

Already at the dock in New London lay our old foe, the Highlander Sea, and our distant cousin, the Californian. New London was gearing up for its big OpSail Connecticut event later in the week, but several of us had been invited to come early for a bit of friendly competition racing around the waters off New London. A change-of-command was scheduled for Pride II at New London as well. On Sunday, July 9, Capt. Miles and I took care of the formalities while the excitement built on the dock. Later that morning, Kim and I went ashore with our things and Pride II went out to defend her honor. It is summer in New England, breezy and green. Guess we'll take a drive.

Watch Below,
Capt. Daniel Parrott