Waterford, Republic of Ireland - A cadet crew that their skipper says is "saltier than most I've seen" helped bring Barque Eagle into this Irish port a day early, propelled by not one but two gales at sea.

Eagle has been dockside in Waterford since Thursday after a hectic three-week transatlantic training cruise. Half the third-class cadets - sophomores - are aboard, learning from the full-time crew and first-class cadets how to sail the tall ship.

A group of 20 southeastern Connecticut residents, including Dan Steward, the first selectman of Waterford, Conn., and Rear Adm. Douglas Teeson, a former Coast Guard Academy superintendent, flew over with plans to welcome the ship to the first stop in its 75th anniversary cruise. But Eagle beat them by a day, so instead of waving their small American flags as the ship docked, they went aboard Friday to greet a crew with tales to tell.

Third-class cadets Carlos Gonzalez, Campbell Fall and David Britten were serving as guides to Irish schoolchildren, the Connecticut contingent and a few tourists on Thursday, but a few days into the cruise Fall and Britten were climbing the masts. They were among 16 cadets and crew who went out on the yardarms in gale winds to set sails that had broken loose.

With the sails whipping around them, they worked for two hours as more experienced hands on deck guided their movements and yelled, "Hold on."

Fall, the first to step out onto the yardarm, had never been up there before, let alone in heavy seas. "Breaking barriers one by one," he called it Friday.

Capt. Eric Jones, Eagle's commanding officer, said the cadets and crew members "did absolutely magnificently." The first gale struck only three days into the voyage, before most of the cadets in training had even had a chance to get their sea legs, he said.

Between gales, the ship sailed through days of fog. All aboard had to listen to the moan of the fog signal around the clock, a sound that wore on the nerves.

Only one serious mishap occurred, when a cadet was thrown across the deck and into a crew member, injuring the crew member's leg. The weather also created complications when an ill cadet had to be airlifted off by being put on another vessel that could be more safely approached by a helicopter.

Friday was the 75th anniversary of the launching of Eagle as the German cadet training ship Horst Vessel. During the celebration, tales were told of the bombings that leveled the area around the shipyard and the hurricane that tattered the sails when the German and American crews sailed the ship to the United States as war booty in 1946.

Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, which arranged the welcoming trip, presented a proclamation Friday from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in honor of the anniversary.

Jones said Eagle will reach another milestone later this summer when the ship makes a stop in Reykjavik, Iceland. There, a member of his Class of 1987 at the Coast Guard Academy, Asgrimur Asgrimsson, deputy chief of staff for the Icelandic Coast Guard, will meet Eagle on its first port call to Reykjavik.

The ship will pause 40 miles northwest of Reykjavik to lay a wreath on the site where the cutter Alexander Hamilton was sunk in January 1942, the first Coast Guard cutter sunk in World War II.

l.mcginley@theday.com