NEWPORT — Blue skies. Good winds. Big crowds.

And, of course, Tall Ships.

Lots of Tall Ships.

Yesterday was a picture-perfect day for the finale of Tall Ships Rhode Island 2007 — the traditional Parade of Sail.

Just ask John Schlowinski, who, well before the procession got under way, had staked out a grassy spot on Ocean Avenue, near Brenton Point, and set up his camera equipment. With other spectators lining the shore all around him, the avid photographer from Long Island, N.Y., stood behind his tripod, occasionally snapping pictures with a long zoom lens.

“It couldn’t be a better day to shoot,” said Schlowsinki, 51, as he gazed out at the flotilla of gaff-rigged schooners and the three-masted barques circling outside the entrance to Narragansett Bay. “You have some clouds and a beautiful subject. You can’t beat this to have all these boats in one place.”

With perfect weather, people from near and far flocked to the shore and took to the water to get a look at the nearly 20 Tall Ships that took part in the five-day festival that ended yesterday. During the week, visitors could walk along Newport’s waterfront and check out the ships up close, standing beside them on piers and even boarding them.

But yesterday was the day to see what they look like under sail — and out on the water together. The breeze filled their sails and made their colorful international flags billow gently.

“It’s easy to imagine what it was like when there was nothing but square-riggers out there,” said Michael Shell, 59, of Barrington, wearing a sailor’s cap “just for fun.”

He and his wife, Karen, had hiked down a slope off Ocean Avenue, across from Brenton Point State Park, and clambered over the rocks to a more isolated spot. There they set up their chairs and put down a cooler at about 10:30, just as the first ships were heading out of the Bay to assemble for the procession.

“What a gorgeous day,” Shell said. Looking through binoculars, he asked, “Is that the German ship?”

Indeed, it was the 293-foot barque Gorch Fock II, the sail training vessel of the German navy and the largest ship in this year’s festival.

While the weather was flawless, the parade wasn’t entirely perfect. In fact, it was Gloria-less. Gloria, the 249-foot barque from Colombia, experienced engine difficulties as the ships were gathering for the start of the procession. At one point, one ship’s captain said, she was going backward. Ultimately, the ship anchored outside Mackerel Cove.

Also, the parade got started about 40 minutes late because of delays getting all the big ships out of Newport Harbor, said parade marshal David Brown, who was aboard the Coast Guard cutter Ida Lewis.

Despite the difficulties, it was “pretty impressive,” Brown said halfway through the parade.

While the winds were less than the 15 knots forecast, he said, “what wind we do have is out of the northeast, so they can set their square sails and get some wind in those. I’m looking at the German barque Gorch Fock. She’s just approaching Castle Hill. She’s flying just about everything.”

Helicopters whizzed by overhead while a blimp circled sluggishly. Some ships fired booming cannon to add to the festive mood of the parade, while the square-riggers spread sailors out on the yardarms for dramatic effect.

Fort Adams State Park, one of the best vantage points, was nearly full of cars, and young and old lined the seawalls and grassy areas on the Bay side of the fort. People spread out blankets, unfolded chairs and opened umbrellas.

“What flag is that, Conor?” Alison Kiely, of Portsmouth, asked her son.

A flag with a green border, yellow diamond and blue inner circle waved at the stern of the 254-foot Cisne Branco.

“Brazil,” 11-year-old Conor answered correctly, thanks to his book of flags at home and the Tall Ships studies his class at The Pennfield School undertook at the end of the term.

His neighbor, 5-year-old Nathaniel Landers, couldn’t help but notice a sinister flag displayed below the national banner on the 191-foot Dewaruci, of Indonesia.

“I spotted the big flag with the X-bones. That’s how I knew it was a pirate ship,” Nathaniel said.

Nearby was Glenn Reynolds, of San Francisco, who made plans to see the Tall Ships after reading about the event in a travel magazine nearly six months ago. He met up with his sister’s family in Connecticut and they all came together.

“I’d been to Newport before. I thought it would be a great setting to seem them in,” said Reynolds, who saw the Tall Ships in New York City in 1976.

The water was full of recreational boaters trying to get closer to the action. From the Mount Hope Bridge in Bristol, a string of vessels could be seen heading south before the parade and north as it wound down.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Scott Dupre said there were no serious incidents and that “everything went off very well.” Brown called it “a huge spectator fleet that for the most part behaved pretty well.”

“I don’t think we can ask more for a parade of sail and a way to wrap up a really successful Tall Ships visit,” Brown said.

Retired Coast Guard Capt. Eric Williams, cochairman of the event, watched the parade from Fort Adams, where a party was held for the event’s hundreds of volunteers.

“It was beautiful, particularly when the ships came back down from Gould Island, you could see them seem them right in a line from the [Pell] bridge on down,” he said. “The cadets in the rigging. It was just beautiful.”

Newport has hosted about a half-dozen Talls Ships events since the inaugural one in 1976. Asked when the next might be, Williams joked, “not next year.” Then he added, “Right now, there are no plans.”

rsalit@projo.com