Age of Sail - Tall Ship passing through

Well, whilst driving through town at sunrise I was pleasantly surprised to see the silhouette of this rather large Tall Ship. I had to take a detour and investigate. The whole harbour was eerily quiet, save for me and a man stood at the ship’s aft smoking a cigarette.

She’s called the Stavros S Niarchos (I know that sounds like some sort of Mexican dish) from London, and is currently owned by the Tall Ships Youth Trust. The Wikipedia entry reckons that it is up for sale if anyone is interested? I can’t find any confirmation of that elsewhere though.

 No - I hadn't stepped a century back in time. She is in fact only twelve years old!

 She's taking the place of the Condor Ferry

 An hour before sunset, she decided she'd had enough of Guernsey. I managed to see her out as I took the coast road home. That's the island of Herm in the background.

 Here she is under full sail, followed behind by her sister ship I think...

More pics of tall ships to come, and some other nautical / piratical stuff we saw in the old Pirate town of Saint Malo...

Age of Sail - German passing through

More information on the beautiful German boat we saw last month...

Managed to track her down on the net, she's the PRÄSIDENT FREIHERR VON MALTZAHN of Hamburg, and is a cutter-ewer hybrid - one of only three still surviving.

Originally a fishing vessel from 1928, she served as an anti-mine ship in the Baltic in WWII.

Their website has some great pics and her full history - make sure you click through the german version too as it contains photos not present in the english pages.

If you look, the sneaky bugger even has a great engine too...

Here's their URL, hope you enjoy their website:
http://www.hf294-maltzahn.de/

For a couple of close-ups, see my post below.

Age of Sail - sailing vessels around St. Peter Port

The drive to work from my old house was always beautiful - through the old town and along the open sea front for two miles, then a left turn through the leafy lanes and done.

At the end of July though, it became even more interesting. Old sail boats and ships started to arrive. Unfortunately, as I was usually in a rush, I had few opportunities to take pictures - or even had a decent camera with me for that matter.

Thinking back to four years ago when I first arrived on the island, I saw a fair few Tall Ships passing through, but as everything else about Guernsey was new to me, I must have taken it for granted and then forgot about them completely.

A sailing colleague at work reckons they must all be on their way to a month long antique sailing vessel festival in Brittany - he says it happens every four years... can't wait for their return in september!

This gorgeous two mast was from Hamburg I think, the close-up is below. Chatted with them for a while, bad weather drove them into Guernsey. They stayed for three days, mainly in the pub...

The nice crew member I chatted to couldn't speak much English (and my German is nill!) but I think he said it was just shy of a century old, and was a fishing boat originally (at least I think that's what he meant...)

Three mast - just beyond Castle Cornet.

Sunset stroll and the boat race - the speed they took in their spinnaker sails as they whipped around the marker buoy was amazing!

My beautiful wife - and a lovely French ketch (I think...) this was full of school children on their annual trip to Guernsey.

And lastly: the view from our new (600 yr old) cottage. We'll miss town a bit, especially the tall ships when they come by... but I think we'll manage to cope.