Tall Ship's Volunteer Crew: 'In Love With The Sea'

Cynthia Rugart, the petite, 30-ish second mate of Philadephia's tall ship, Gazela, stood on deck yesterday shouting orders through cupped hands as the graceful old vessel sliced slowly up the Delaware River, returning home to Penn's Landing after a month-long cruise.

The scarred pine deck of the 107-year-old square-rigger was a beehive of activity as the 16-member crew scampered about with practiced precision.

Everybody had a job. Three two-member teams stood on lines 30 feet, 60 feet and 90 feet in the air, leaning over the ship's yardarms to unwind other lines. Other crew members wrestled with lines controlling the ship's sails. Captain Pete Hall kept the vessel on course while lookout Madeleine Jones peered across the bow through a pair of bright yellow binoculars.

This is how the Gazela crew - all of them members of the Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild - spent their summer vacations.

"It's ironic. We all go on vacation to work three times harder than we do on our regular jobs," said John Bellenzeni, 32, as he coiled a heavy line. ''You have to be in love with the sea and just a little bit crazy."

The Gazela was returning from Norfolk and Alexandria, Va., Washington, Baltimore and Cambridge, Md., on its annual goodwill tour. At the seaports along the way, throngs crowded aboard the 177-foot ship to sample her rich history.

The ship, named Gazela Primeiro when it was built in 1883 in Portugal, was constructed from pines in a forest planted in the 15th century by Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator. The Gazela was first a trading ship, then a fishing vessel, its crew of about 40 fishing for cod near Newfoundland.

The Gazela, the oldest wooden square-rigged sailing vessel still in operation, was converted to diesel in 1948.

It was acquired by a group of volunteers from Philadelphia and, in 1969, was sailed from Portugal to Penn's Landing, where it has become a symbol of the city's naval history.

That original group became the Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild in 1972. The guild, which takes on historical vessels as learning projects, also owns the 86-year-old lightship Barnegat and the 88-year-old tugboat Jupiter.

The guild is trying to raise enough money to enable the Gazela to sail to Portugal in 1992 to participate in a tall-ship parade that will retrace Christopher Columbus' route from Portugal to Spain to the New World.