The American Sail Training Association's mission is to encourage character building through sail training, promote sail training to the North American public and support education under sail.
Last Saturday, July 29th, I had the great honor of being invited to attend the USCGC Barque EAGLE’s Change of Command Ceremony in Newport, Rhode Island. CAPTAIN Eric Shaw’s retirement from the Coast Guard was also celebrated. Last week I wrote about CAPTAIN Christopher Sinnett the new CO.
We hope to see more of CAPT Shaw around the ASTA office in the future as he settles down in Newport with his family.
Click on the above photo to see additional photo’s.
Here is a short video that I shot with my Treo. It’s a little far away and the sound is not the best, but you get the idea.
This interesting story came in from our friend and former colleague Steve Baker. It appeared in the July 26, 2006 edition of the Norwalk Advocate and it’s another great story about the benefits of getting youth out sailing. You can read the entire story by clicking here.
Expand personal horizons and opportunities and raise social, recreational and career sights of those to whom sailing is otherwise unavailable, especially underserved city youth, known as our “Young Mariners;”
Deliver lifelong benefits such as swimming, water safety, teamwork and self-confidence;
Encourage children’s curiosity for weather, navigation, marine life and other resources of Long Island Sound;
Build intellectual skills and motivation to achieve academic and lifelong success.
These inner city kids usually sail in Optmists; however, this program gives them a taste for the bigger boat experience. They recently had the chance to sail on the legendary yacht Ticonderoga. They surely got the idea of the teamwork and responsibility that goes into sailing a larger vessel and that is what sail training is all about.
Steve Baker keeps a great blog called Sailscape. There are lots of super images of sailing including many he took during his years as ASTA’s Race Director. Check it out!
Then on July 18th the South Carolina Maritime Heritage Foundation announced that they hired Tony Arrow as captain of the Schooner Spirit of South Carolina. Press Release. Tony is a great professional mariner, experienced sail trainer and longtime ASTA member and supporter. We wish him the best with this exciting opportunity.
Lot’s of exciting things have taken place on this project since Brad and Meghan Van Liew arrived in Charleston. The 2006 ASTA Conference will be in their city and I look forward to getting a first hand look at the ship and learning more about the programs they have planned.
While South Carolina will soon have it’s own official tall ship, it can also soon boast about having one of it’s natives commanding America’s Tall Ship the USCGC Barque EAGLE. On Saturday July 29th there will be a Change of Command Ceremony in Newport, RI with Captain Eric Shaw handing over the keys to Captain Chris Sinnett. Read The State article about Captain Sinnett.
We wish Captain Sinnett the best and we look forward to seeing Newport resident Captain Shaw around the ASTA office more often!
Kind of like winning the Super Bowl and the World Series in the same year!
Last night, on the way home after work, I stopped into Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Nathaniel Phlibrick’s new book, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War. Mr Philbrick is one of the most popular nonfiction writers of his time. His previous bestsellers include In the Heart of the Sea:The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838-1842). On the way to the cashier I checked out the magazine racks and the cover of the July/August 2006 Bookmarks Magazine caught my eye with an inviting cover: “Tale A Summer Voyage: 101 Crackerjack Sea Books” by Dean King. This is a great article for anyone interested in tall ships, maritime history or just reading great adventure. Fortunately, this article appears on line, so check it out be clicking here.
One of my favorite books of all time is #16 Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. I grew up in Fairhaven, MA where Joshua Slocum is a bit of a local hero. After falling on some hard times, a friend of Slocum from Fairhaven offered him a ”ship” which turned out to be a ‘42 sloop in need of much repair named Spray. Sailing Alone Around the World is the first “real” book that I can remember reading as a young boy. There is a great Slocum webpage hosted by the Milicent Library in Fairhaven. (click here)
There are so many great books on this list with many new exciting discoveries for me. I figure I may be able to get throught it all in about five years!
Here’s another Tall Ships cartoon that appeared in the July 9, 2006 Cleveland Plain Dealer which is just before the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE 2006 arrived for the Huntington Cleveland Harborfest. The cartoonist is Jeff Darcy.
Well, we have finished the first stop of the 2006 TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE Series and from all accounts, the Huntington Cleveland Harborfest as a success. It was a little hot and a few thunderstorms blew in on Friday evening which put a bit of a damper on some corporate hospitality and sunset sails but everything seemed to run very smoothly. We’ve been to Cleveland 2 times previously working with IMG and this time our port partners were the Great Lakes Science Center and the Steamship Wiiliam G. Mather Museum. The museums did a great job and we are looking forward to coming back to North Coast Harbor again in 2010!
The ASTA Race Team, which is lead by Jonathan Harley, ASTA Race Director, did a great job. In fact, they were so on top of things that I left earlier than planned to return to Newport to work on some other very exciting initiatives as well as future TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE planning.
The next port stop of the 2006 TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE Series is Bay City, MI, which was 2001 ASTA Port of the Year. The Bay City Tall Ships Celebration is always a lot of fun and Bay City is a place that does a great job with their own sail training program, BaySail.
Today was the Parade of Sail for the Huntington Cleveland Harborfest. The weather wasn’t the greatest but it is supposed to be spectacular over the next 4 days. So load up our podcast and come on down!
Anyone who shows up at the ASTA booth with a podcast loaded on their iPod or MP3 player and mentions this blog, we receive a free copy of ASTA’s Sail Tall Ships!, which is a 400 page book on sail training and tall ships. (Retail value $15)
Here are some pictures to get you in the mood. While we may not have Johnny Dep playing Jack Sparrow, you will get a chance to meet ASTA Race Director Lord Horatio Nelson Harley!
Today we traveled nearly 700 miles by minivan from Newport to Cleveland. Unfortunately, we had to leave Alexandra behind this morning because she had a wisdom tooth attack; she’s scheduled to be back with the Race Team on Weds. Mary and Thad Koza arrive tomorrow. Although there were a few showers along the way, we arrived to spectacular weather in Cleveland. Let’s hope it’s here to stay! This is just the begining of another great month travelling with the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE Fleet and introducing the Midwest to sail training.
The Huntington Cleveland Harborfest is the first stop of the 2006 TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE Series and we have created an informative audio tour of the ships including interviews with captains and great sea music for your enjoyment. You can download the file by following these instructions:
To take this podcast with you to the festival and play it on your iPod:
Yesterday I ran across this editorial cartoon and I emailed the cartoonist who draws for the The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and is syndicated through out the country. I knew that several tall ships were in North Carolina over the weekend as part of an America’s Sail event but it wasn’t clear to me how the oil tanker made it into the picture. He responded very quickly via email and advised that on the day the vessels arrived, the US House of Representatives voted on legislation that would permit offshore drilling and that he was using cartoonist license in representing that politicians will often cloak their deeds and actions in strong positive imagery like the tall ships. I was glad to learn that there was no direct connection that I would have been embarrassingly unaware of! I enjoyed the cartoon but advised him the only thing missing was that the tall ships weren’t flying the ASTA flag!
In any case, the Internet is an amazing tool. It’s power to educate us is only surpassed by its value as a communication medium. I now have a new acquantaince in Raleigh that I am trying to convince to take his daughter on a life changing sail training experience on an ASTA member vessel. I learned that he travels to Canada frequently has run into ASTA Member vessel Bluenose II on several occasisions. He is also a musician so I turned him on to Tom and Chris Kastle who will be featured on our 2006 TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE podcast which is coming soon! For more of Dwane Powell’s great cartoons, check out his wesite here.
Yesterday we posted a short TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE video ad on the ASTA website using Google video. We also posted it here on Tall Ships Today! using YouTube.com. In it’s first 1/2 day of being posted, nearly 400 people viewed the video on both websites which creates pretty incredible opportunities for a small nonprofit like ASTA. If you haven’t checked it out already, please take a look and by all means forward it to as many people as possible that you think would enjoy it. The more viewers, the more prominently it will be featured in Google video and the more people that will learn about sail training.
We will be posting other video’s over the course of the summer that we are sure you will enjoy. Grab some popcorn, enjoy the show and thanks for viewing!
Last night, on the way home after work, I stopped into Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Nathaniel Phlibrick’s new book, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War. Mr Philbrick is one of the most popular nonfiction writers of his time. His previous bestsellers include In the Heart of the Sea:The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838-1842). On the way to the cashier I checked out the magazine racks and the cover of the July/August 2006 Bookmarks Magazine caught my eye with an inviting cover: “Tale A Summer Voyage: 101 Crackerjack Sea Books” by Dean King. This is a great article for anyone interested in tall ships, maritime history or just reading great adventure. Fortunately, this article appears on line, so check it out be 
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