Oliver Hazard Perry - Tall Ship Voyage Focuses on Families

Bonding with family is the theme for a unique weekend getaway aboard the 180-foot Tall Ship Mystic, which is hosting Oliver Hazard Perry Rhode Island’s 2014 summer and fall education-at-sea sessions. The Narragansett Bay Family Weekend is scheduled for July 19-20, and the Saturday/Sunday overnight excursion still has berths available and encourages families and friends to trade in technology and other daily distractions for the experience of an open-water sail training adventure.

The price of $250 per person includes all meals, accommodation (private two-person staterooms) and instruction for two days of sailing, leaving at 8 a.m. Saturday from Newport, Rhode Island’s Fort Adams State Park and returning at 6 p.m. Sunday evening, with an overnight anchorage on Saturday in Dutch Harbor in Jamestown,R.I. (Itinerary is subject to change and dependent on weather.)

“I have a photo of my daughter, Elinore, at age 9, at the wheel of the Schooner Harvey Gamage, and she looks like there’s nothing more fun in the world than steering a big ship,” said Captain Richard Bailey, who will serve as the Mystic’s sailing master and is the official captain of the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry, currently under construction, “and I think that might be the case.”

Nine-year-old Elinore Bailey, at the helm of a Tall Ship, foreshadows the fun to be had
by families aboard SV Mystic in July (Photo Credit: Richard Bailey).

Bailey, who was captain of the famous HMS Rose for decades, said the Narragansett Family Weekend is an opportunity for kids do something “really adventurous with their parents, but they don’t have to stand every moment of a watch with them.” He added that one parent from Portland, Ore., is bringing his nine-year old son. “He’s typical of the parents I used to host on the Rose, but sometimes we’d get three generations of the same family aboard, so it’s really for everyone and anyone - a great bonding experience.”

The SV Mystic, a 180-foot USCG certified and inspected three-masted square topsail schooner, also will carry out OHPRI’s teen summer camps, voyages for adults, Professional Development Teachers Voyage, and Waves of Wellness Yoga Voyage.

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