Sea Spectacle
America's 250th birthday celebration sets sail for New Orleans, where history and tall ships converge on the Mississippi.
If America is turning 250, it ought to arrive the right way. Under sail, on the Mississippi, and with tall ships lining the riverfront.
That's what Sail 250 New Orleans is offering, and it's worth motoring down I-10.
Running May 27 through June 1, the event plants New Orleans as the first stop in a national maritime celebration of the country's Semiquincentennial. The Crescent City's riverfront will host tall ships, U.S. naval vessels, public tours, fireworks, and a full slate of programming stretching from the Crescent City Connection toward Poland Avenue Wharf.
Organizers say the lineup mixes modern U.S. military vessels with international tall ships, which means you can, in the span of an afternoon, take in both the blunt power of contemporary naval engineering and the kind of old-world seamanship that makes you understand why people used to write odes to the sea.
One headline vessel is the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship that runs 844 feet and tips the scales past 40,000 tons. But the one caught our eye is the ARC Gloria—a three-masted steel barque built in Spain and commissioned into the Colombian Navy in 1968.
