In August Ron joined one of the World’s last square rigged sailing ships and the only large sailing ‘tall ship’ presently ‘at work’ in the USA, the US Coast Guard Eagle for a passage from Portland Maine to Newport Rhode Island.
In 1981 Ron was invited to sail aboard Eagle on a passage from Cork, on the South coast of Ireland, to Lisbon, Portugal. Now thirty one years later Ron was again invited to join Eagle in Portland, Maine, for a five day passage to Newport, Rhode Island.
Sailing ships have fascinated Ron since he was a boy, learning to sail his seven foot P Class dingy in Auckland, New Zealand. He always dreamed of following the Pacific voyages of Drake, Cook and Vancouver. He could not have imagined in his youth, that he would in fact achieve a lifetime immersed in ships and sailing — his own personal voyage of discovery.
Ron has written a fantastic account of his adventure onboard Eagle for the Western Mariner Magazine. The official publisher for the Vancouver and Vancouver Island branches of the Canadian Institute of Marine Engineering.
A PDF copy of the article can be downloaded here.