Are You Ready for the CHALLENGE?

Tall Ships®Victoria (Photo by Erin Short)

Next Stop - California!

Victoria, British Columbia was the starting point of the 2008 TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Race Series. Ships, crews and crowds were treated to gorgeous weather and stunning views of the tall ships set against the magnificent scenery that British Columbia offers. 

From there, the ships raced to Tacoma, Washington, 2005 ASTA Port of the Year winner. Hundreds of thousands of people swarmed the waterfront to board the ships, take part in mock cannon battles and see a Fourth of July fireworks display light up the sky behind these historic vessels.

LADY WASHINGTON on her way to Victoria (Photo by Thad Koza)

 The last port in the Pacific Northwest was the city of Port Alberni, set amongst the Coastal Mountain Range. It was truly a community effort to welcome and entertain the ships and crews. First Nation representatives were on hand to officially welcome the tall ships to the Alberni Valley and crews were able to relax before the long sail down the coast to San Francisco.

Produced by the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, the Festival of Sail San Francisco will run from July 23rd to the 27th.  Once in San Francisco, the ships will be berthed along the historic Embarcadero on San Francisco Bay.  With the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, the crews of the fifteen tall ships will be able to explore this historic and culturally diverse city.

          From San Francisco, the ships will race to the seaside town of Oxnard on August 7th and stay until the 10th for the Tall Ships® Festival organized by the Channel Islands Harbor Foundation, Inc.

           The ships then continue down the coast to San Pedro for Festival of Sail Los Angeles, organized by the Los Angeles Maritime Institute and the City and Port of Los Angeles. The event will run from August 15-17. Movie star vessels such as the HMS Bounty (of Mutiny on the Bounty fame) and HMS Surprise (formerly HMS Rose of Master and Commander) will be on hand to add some swashbuckling fun to all the planned festivities.

          From August 20-24th, the final port of call in the race series will be San Diego, a spectacular waterfront venue and site of the largest naval fleet in the world. The TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® fleet will be greeted by ships from the US Navy, Coast Guard and San Diego Harbor Police during the Parade of Sail into the San Diego Bay. 

          Following the conclusion of the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Race Series, many of the ships will return north to the Toshiba Tall Ships® Festival hosted by the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, September 6th and 7th.  Sunset cannon battles, family-oriented interactive presentations of live ocean animal, climbing and sail furling, and local art and crafts, will all be set against the rugged and beautiful coast of Dana Point. 

          The TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Race Series rotates among the North American coasts and the Great Lakes on a 3-4 year basis. The 2009 series will return the ships to the Atlantic Coast for a transatlantic event, the TALL SHIPS® ATLANTIC CHALLENGE, jointly organized by Sail Training International and ASTA. The ships will then be in the Great Lakes for 2010.

Based in Newport, RI, the American Sail Training Association (www.sailtraining.org) is a non-profit organization dedicated to encourage character building through sail training and education under sail.

You can follow the progress of the series through the new ASTA website.

For a day by day inside account of what it is like to travel with the ASTA race team, check out the Blogs of the ASTA summer interns. 

Read what the press has to say about it all in our News and Media section.

Also, check out our new Photo Gallery for some awesome pictures of the ships and port festivities.  

Click here to view the full summer schedule, and here to view the list of participating ASTA vessels.   

(Slide show images by Thomas Hyde)