I’m gonna do it again. I’m going to reveal that I’m a hopeless, shameless fan-boy when it comes to the United States Coast Guard. If you throw a square-rigged sailing ship into the mix, I’m absolutely defeated. I have no defense against this sort of thing.

If traditional sailing ships hold even a little bit of attraction for you, perhaps you’ll spend a few minutes looking at a selection of photographs I took today.

First, here’s a picture from the Coast Guard website. If you look very carefully, you can actually see me. But you’ve got to know where to look. More on that later.

(Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Tara Molle, U.S. Coast Guard)

Here’s Eagle’s Captain, Chris Sinnett.

I’m not sure this is the right term, but I would call this the “quarter deck”, where all the important stuff happens:

But important stuff happens everywhere aboard a large sailing vessel. These cadets are sanding a companion ladder. It’s a steel ship, but it’s got plenty of woodwork to maintain.

This gives me an idea, though. I mean, gosh, with four or five of these cadets at my disposal, I’m pretty sure I could tidy up my own boat, Two Lucky Fish, in short order!

Then I went belowdecks where the officers’ quarters are. I took some shots of the “fancy bits”. Trust me, it ain’t all like this. Mostly, the Eagle’s interior looks like, well, like the interior of a steel warship. But there are some portions that express a bit more grandeur and formality.

The highlight of my day, though, was climbing into the maintop. Landlubbers might assume that by “maintop” I mean to imply that I climbed to the “top” of the “mainmast”, but that’s not correct. I only climbed to the “top”, the first platform, about 40 feet above the deck.

We wore climbing harnesses, and we learned the safety rules: Always maintain three points of contact; grab only vertical, standing rigging; don’t place both feet on a single ratline; and don’t straddle a shroud, just stay in one “lane” as you climb. Our instructor was Seaman Sharon Mezulis, who was extremely attentive and patient. Somehow, I got the impression that this was NOT the first time she’d explained this sort of thing to wide-eyed neophytes!

We were also assisted by Petty Officer 3rd Class Pete Lenzo, a confident, friendly young man who seems to appreciate where life has taken him so far: “Look at me. I mean, look at what I do for a living!”

Indeed, it was easy, on such a beautiful day, to want it all never to end, somehow.

And just to prove that it was actually me up there, taking these pictures, I asked Seaman Mezulis to snap one of me. Yup, that’s really me, and that’s really the deck way, way down there.

There’s no “lubber’s hole” in the tops of the Eagle, so to get there you must climb the futtock shrouds. This means that for a time you climb rigging that leans out away from the mast, rather than leaning in toward the mast.

Here’s a shot showing what I mean. You climb up the lower shrouds, and then, just below the top, you climb the futtocks. It’s a little bit unnerving, I admit.

Once up there, I stayed for the better part of an hour…maybe more, I’m not sure. Here are some pictures I took.

Jayhawk and a Dolphin helicopters flying in formation.

Seattle’s new fireboat, Leschi, gave us a salute.

And then it was time to come down, and the futtock shrouds to be faced, once more. Seaman Mezulis provided more of her careful, precise instruction, and it was a lot easier going down.

Here’s the tricky bit; now it’s time to unclip that big carabiner.

After that, it’s pretty easy. Just don’t get cocky and forget to maintain three points of contact!

A HUGE thank you to Seaman Mezulis for helping us civilians get ourselves up, across, and down without too much risk.

What a great day! In case it isn’t obvious, I enjoyed myself. You know…just a little.

So in the first picture, the one at the very beginning of this post, did you find me? This should help. There I am, in the maintop, conspicuous in my light-blue shirt:

If you’ve read this far, and if you’re going to be around Tacoma at all this weekend, you owe it to yourself to visit the Tall Ships Tacoma festival at Foss Waterway.

Thanks to the captain, officers, crew, and cadets of US Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, and to the various Seattle-based CG personnel who helped make it all come together, including Captain Stephen Metruck (Commander of US Coast Guard Sector Seattle) and Public Affairs Specialist Shawn Eggert.