What a week, oh my.

Not only will the week-end be dominated by the previously mentioned Red Bull Air Race finals, it’s been brought to my attention yesterday that Barcelona has a very special guest mooring tonight and tomorrow at Port Vell.

Tara.

Tara is a schooner with an extraordinary history. She was purpose-built for polar expeditions as Antarctica in 1989 by Dr Jean-Louis Étienne, with a specially designed aluminum hull curved so that the ice packs don’t crush it to smithereens like Shackleton’s ill-fated Endurance.
Later, she was bought by Sir Peter Blake after he retired from racing for his exploration tours around the world, and renamed Seamaster. Seamaster was his mothership in his work for the United Nations Environment Programme, and it is onboard this ship that he was murdered by pirates in the Amazon in 2001, a tragic and pointless end for one of the most talented yachtsmen of our times.
It was then rebought and renamed Tara and put to service for Tara Expeditions and spent over 500 days encased in the Artic ice, drifting with the pack to measure global warming. Today she’s on a round-the-world trip set to take her pretty much everywhere, that will end in 2012.

This fantastic boat is here tonight and I’m so going to be there.

More about Tara on the French Wikipedia