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.

 

 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.