Tall ships at anchor

Sometimes I read magazines when they first arrive in my mail and I'm glad I noticed an ad for the showing of tall ships in Tacoma, Washington. Tall ships mean sail boats - ships with masts and the ones at harbor that I wanted to see were ships with masts of fifty feet or more. Lady Washington is a replica of a privateer during the American Revolution. She fought to help the colonies gain their independence from England. I'm interested in the history of that time so I thought how neat it would be to set foot on her deck.
I wasn't too anxious to make the 4 hour drive to Tacoma and not at all excited about driving about in the confusing city either so I thought I would skip the visit altogether. Well it so happened that I have a son closer to Tacoma who might be willing to make the trip from Everett to Tacoma with me. He did.
Throngs of people swarmed the docks creating long lines of waiting to get on board Lady Washington or any other tall ship. We snaked around the usual winding lines for an hour and finally boarded a Mexican vessel, the Cuauhtemoc, a barque, whose homeport is Acapulco. We traisped up and down the deck snapping photos of the intriguing ropes and rigging. The sails were not up but it was interesting just the same. Then it was on to the Russian vessel, Pallada, a full rigged ship, 356 feet long, built in Poland in the 1980s.
These ships and several others had raced from Vancouver, Canada, to Seattle before anchoring in Tacoma, making news and publicity along the way. And drawing crowds because of the fascination of the sailing ships of times past. I posted many of the pictures of masts and grandchildren on www.sherer.org/tallshipsjuly.html
My family had been in San Diego in the 1970's and saw the Star of India. the flagship of the Maritime Museum there. Later I took a barefoot cruise on a sailing vessel in the Caribbean where I was disappointed that I wasn't allowed to climb the rigging. Well I wasn't allowed to climb anything but steps in these ships either.
The fascination still lingers.
Naomi Sherer