Brig Mircea, the training ship of the Mircea cel Batran Naval Academy, on Sunday left the seaport of Constanta (south-eastern Romania) to go on a new annual drilling cruise, during which it will take part for the third time in the Competition of Tall Ships in the Atlantic.
The current voyage will end on September 1. By the end of these almost six months the ship and the crew, which is made up of 190 students and pupils of the School of Master Mariners and ten foreign cadets from Croatia, France, Turkey and the US, are to cover more than 12,500 miles by crossing the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic.
"The itinerary includes the ports of Catania, Cadiz, Tenerife, Hamilton, Charleston, Boston, Ponta Delgada, Gibraltar and Iraklion. The sailor students and pupils are also to steer the brig during three of the six competitions of the traditional regatta called the Competition of Tall Ships in the Atlantic, in which the school ship Mircea takes part for the third time," said Captain Mugur Lucian, spokesman for the Mircea cel Batran Naval Academy.
The school ship Mircea was built over 1938-39 at the Blohm und Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, and in 2002 it went through its last capital repair at the shipyard in Braila (eastern Romania).
In 2004 the brig Mircea crossed the Atlantic for the second time (it had crossed it for the first time in 1976) and took part in the nautical competition Tall Ships Challenge 2004, followed in 2005 by the drilling cruise in the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, where it participated in the competition Tall Ships Race 2005 and in international maritime festivals and jubilee events in Belgium, France, Great Britain, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands.
The drilling cruise in 2006 took place in the Black Sea, Novorossiysk, Sevastopol, Odessa, Varna and Samsun and in 2007 the school ship Mircea went on a cruise to the Mediterranean and took part in the competition Tall Ships Race Mediterranea with stopovers in the ports of Piraeus, Alicante, Barcelona, Toulon and Genoa.
In 2008 the brig Mircea went on a 115-day drilling cruise to the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and on this occasion took part in the festivities occasioned by the 50th anniversary of its sister ship, the school ship of the German navy, Gorch Fock.
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