Recently I was treated to a Harbour Cruise in Sydney for my 67th Birthday on board The Tall Ship the "Soren Larsen". Even though it rained most of the day it was a challenge to get good images.
"The Søren Larsen was one of the last cargo carrying sailing ships built in 1949 in oak by the Danish ship building family Søren Larsen & sons in northern Denmark. After carrying cargo throughout Scandinavia, Iceland, northern Europe and Britain, she was lovingly restored and re-rigged in 1978, to the graceful 19th century Brigantine she is today. Søren Larsen actually achieved international fame as a star of the BBC's classic series 'The Onedin Line'. Other film work includes 'French Lieutenant's Woman' and 'Shackleton' which took her to the Arctic to play the role of the Endurance in the ice pack. During filming she became the first wooden sailing ship to reach Arctic Greenland in seventy years.
Søren Larsen was chosen to be Flagship of the First Fleet Re-enactment Voyage celebrating Australia’s Bicentennial. She led a fleet of 8 square riggers on an ambitious eight month, 22,000 mile voyage from Portsmouth to arrive in Sydney on 26th January 1988 – Australia Day. She came to Auckland in 1989 to represent Britain in the 150th Celebrations and adopted New Zealand as her base from which to cruise the idyllic South Pacific Islands. In 1991 she made a passage back to Europe along the Clipper Route across the Southern Ocean and in December 1991 she became the first British tall ship to round Cape Horn since 1936. After a major refit in the UK at Gloucester, Søren Larsen celebrated the Millennium with a spectacular round the world voyage, visiting 25 countries and sailing 30,000 nautical miles. For the last two decades she has sailed in the delightful islands of the tropical South Pacific, making major voyages as far as Easter Island, Pitcairn, the Marquesas islands of French Polynesia and across the heart of Oceania with the trade winds. After joining the Authentic Charters fleet in 2012 the Søren Larsen, is now one of the very few authentic timber square riggers still operating in the 21st century. Based from Sydney Harbour, Australia, she now provides daily harbour sails, charters and incredibly she continues to set out on voyages to remote tropical destinations in the Pacific and around the world.
When you step onboard the beautifully crafted and maintained Søren Larsen, you truly understand why she is a famous star of the sea".