Triple Dutch treat of visiting ships heading to Adelaide

THE biggest gathering of tall ships in South Australia in 25 years will take place in Port Adelaide in August.

DUTCH BOAT PROMO

THE biggest gathering of tall ships in South Australia in 25 years will take place in Port Adelaide in August.

SA Maritime Museum director Kevin Jones has persuaded the operators of three Dutch tall ships en route to the International Fleet Review in Sydney to stay over at Port Adelaide.

"They were planning to come for a day and we just said we would welcome them and put on a party for the crew and captains and they said maybe they could stay a bit longer," Mr Jones said.

The Dutch ships will be joined by the Maritime Museum's Falie and One & All to fill the Inner Harbour at Port Adelaide with sailing vessels of another era.

The three Dutch tall ships are Oosterschelde, Europa and Tecla.

The Oosterschelde, a 50-metre, three-masted topsail schooner of 400 tonnes, is the last of her kind, fully restored in the 1990s.

The ships will be open to the public on the weekend of August 31 and September 1, before sailing on to Sydney via Hobart.

Yesterday, the three tall ships were east of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, racing each other to Western Australia.

The visit will enable Port Adelaide to relive its glory days as a busy tall ships port. Mr Jones said the SA Maritime Museum would stage a festival of maritime trades to go with the tall ships visit.

Today the port handles about 15 million tonnes of cargo each year.