Schooners waylaid in Charleston wait until Ida moves along

11 Nov 2009 by Sean in Charleston Events

Two tall ships, the schooners Virginia and Spirit of Massachusetts, in town for a scheduled stopover, are staying a little longer thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

I took a trip down to the Charleston Maritime Center to get up close with these amazing wooden tall ships.  One member of the friendly crew even agreed to go on camera and discuss life aboard the Spirit of Mass.

Editor’s note: I have to warn you, I’m doing my best with the equipment I have.  My voice-overs are cheesy!  lol

I have a huge place in my heart for schooners.  For five summers, I worked on a few schooners in Maine, mainly the Margaret Todd in Bar Harbor.

While there are many similarities between these vessels and rigs and the ones I worked on, the crews aboard the Virginia and Spirit of Massachusetts are the real deal.  They sail up and down the coast following the seasons.  It’s adventurous souls like these who are preserving the tradition of tall ship sailing.

Hurricane Ida has been downgraded to a tropical depression or even extratropical by now.  But it’s still a weather event as we can see by the rain we’re getting this morning.

The fear for these sailors is that when the low moves offshore it will play off of another weather system and create a dangerous situation offshore.

Check out this forecast (from NOAA):

...GALE FORCE WINDS EXPECTED THU NIGHT INTO FRI… .THIS AFTERNOON…S TO SE WINDS 15 TO 25 KT. SEAS 6 TO 10 FT. SCATTERED SHOWERS AND TSTMS…MAINLY W. .TONIGHT…S TO SE WINDS 20 TO 30 KT…EXCEPT W OF 1000 FM BECOMING W TO NW 15 TO 25 KT. SEAS 8 TO 12 FT…EXCEPT FAR W PART 6 TO 9 FT. SCATTERED SHOWERS AND TSTMS. .THU…E PORTION…S TO SW WINDS DIMINISHING TO 10 TO 15 KT. SEAS 8 TO 11 FT. W PORTION…W TO NW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT. SEAS 6 TO 10 FT. SCATTERED SHOWERS AND TSTMS ENDING LATE. .THU NIGHT…W TO SW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT…EXCEPT W OF 1000 FM N TO NW 25 TO 35 KT. SEAS 8 TO 12 FT THROUGHOUT. .FRI…W TO NW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT…EXCEPT W OF 1000 FM N TO NW 25 TO 35 KT…BECOMING N TO NW 20 TO 30 KT THROUGHOUT LATE. SEAS 10 TO 15 FT.

Yikes!  10 to 15 ft. seas?!  No, thanks.

Meanwhile, our own tall ship, the Spirit of South Carolina, lays along the dock just upriver from the two visiting vessels.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Charleston has quite a maritime history.  Thanks to the South Carolina Maritime Heritage Foundation, some of that history is coming back to life.

For quite a while, the Pride, a boat that looks like a toy compared to these finely-crafted beauties, was the only representation of that history.  But the folks at SC Maritime brought the Spirit of SC alive when she launched in 2007.

There was a time when schooners and square-riggers dominated the Charleston skyline with their sky-scraping masts.  The only visible remnants of that era are some of the street names on the harbor (Boyce’s Wharf, Adjer’s Wharf, etc.).

Getting up close with the Spirit of Mass., you could feel just a little bit of our history in the presence of this old, complicated sailing rig and its crew.

Jeff, the deckhand I spoke with, wearing a palm to protect his hand, was tying a whipping (a tightly wound wrapping of twine) on one of the Spirit’s halyards (the thick lines that make the sails go up and down) so he could cut the halyard a little shorter without fraying.

He was pretty salty.

The boats should be in town at least until the weekend as the stormy weather lingers.