A surprise visitor to the West India Dock today is the Tall Ship Stavros S Niarchos . She was last in the dock at around September last year.
A few weeks ago I was writing about how many of the Tall Ships carry out valuable work training young people and the Stavros S Niarchos is a good example of this.
The Stavros S Niarchos is a British brig-rigged tall ship owned and operated by the Tall Ships Youth Trust. Built in 2000, she has been used to give young people the opportunity to develop skills and talents whilst undertaking voyages to various locations. She is also available for voyages and holidays which provides revenue to maintain the operation of the ship.
Since its inception in the 50s the organisation has taken 100,000 trainees to sea and sailed 1.9 million nautical miles. The ship has a Length of 197ft , Masts of 148ft and Beam of 32ft, she usually operates a crew of 69 which include regular crew and volunteers.
The large tall ships can be expensive to maintain, earlier in the week I reported that the TS Royalist was due to be decommissioned for that reason.
The Stavros S Niarchos is relatively new but was put up for sale last year, it does not appear that she has been sold yet, however the market for second-hand tall ships must be quite limited.
She joins the Super Yacht Christopher and the HMS Westminster in West India Dock at the moment to offer an interesting selection of ships.
Photo by Eric Pemberton
Photo by Eric Pemberton