In port this month

The Auckland Anniversary Regatta a few weeks ago brought a flock of tall ships into port. Good old Soren Larsen was around for a while, and I felt sure that the Spirit of Adventure visited us briefly. I recognise her profile. She's a tall ship especially designed to teach young people how to sail.
Now Windeward Bound, the brigantine that famously recreated Matthew Flinders' epic voyage, is tied up at Princess Wharf. She (like Endeavour) looks frighteningly small to venture out into the Tasman, let alone halfway around the world.
As if that weren't enough, one day I pounded around the corner to come face to bow with the QE2. She may no longer be the biggest cruise liner in the world, but she's still one of the most elegant, for my money, looking for all the world like one of those old Cunard Lines Art Deco posters. I shouted aloud in excitement. I'd only seen her once before, dwarfed by the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but she towered over the Hilton Hotel on the wharf. Six men were abseiling down that famous funnel, painting, like tiny Action Man figures.
The next day I heard her horn, sounding the departure - it was deafening, even all the way down at my office in Westhaven (about a twenty minute walk).
The following morning, her berth was taken by Aurora, a megalithic white office block of a ship: she accommodates 1,950 passengers, has an atrium with a waterfall, and three swimming pools (including one with a sliding glass roof). The day after, the brand spanking new Diamond Princess arrived, all 116,000 tonnes of her. Both seemed even more monstrous than QE2, but less dignified.
The ferries turn and dock right next to the big ships so we get a tug's-eye view of the hull.
My personal favourite is the relatively miniscule Clipper Odyssey, which looks like an elegant version of those wonderful coastal tramps that ploughed their way from Hong Kong to Vladivostok via Shanghai in the '30s.

I grew up watching ships come and go - "under the hook," as they say in Port Melbourne. My grandfather was a warfie. So were all his mates.
We used to go down to Station Pier and watch the passenger ships leave. In those days, everyone on board, and everyone on the wharf, would throw streamers, and try to catch the streamers thrown by others. So as the ship pulled away from the dock it was still connected to the land by a bright web of thin paper strips. One by one, the streamers broke, until the last one fluttered into the water, and then the people on the wharf who were saying goodbye would shed a tear and stop waving.
Nobody throws streamers anymore, which I'm sure is much better for the environment, but not nearly as much fun.