IF YOU GO.

Capt. Gordon Sloane of the Fair Jeanne, a 110-foot ship docked at the City Front for the next 10 days, is welcoming visitors on board for tours.

If you’ve driven down by City Front in the past couple of days and think you’ve seen a pirate ship, your eyes are not deceiving you. Moored in the Yazoo Canal is a tall ship measuring 110-feet in length, 81 feet high and weighing 138 tons. It’s the Fair Jeanne.

But unlike a pirate ship, the crew aboard is quite welcoming and, instead of skull and crossbones flags, a Canadian flag flies above its deck.

&#8220As soon as you come on board, you’re part of the crew,” said Capt. Gordon Sloane, 37. &#8220But we don’t take passengers. This is a working ship.”

It’s actually a classroom in the water, Sloane said. The ship is one of two tall-ship sail-training vessels owned by the Bytown Brigantine in Ottawa, Ontario.

&#8220We teach individuals or school groups everything they need to know about sailing,” said Sloane, who has been working on tall ships for 21 years and has been a captain for 17.

The ship and its member crew are in Vicksburg for 10 days as part of a yearlong voyage to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the launching of the Fair Jeanne.

And so far, the &#8220Red Carpet City” has lived up to its name, Sloane said.

&#8220Vicksburg has really welcomed us,” he said. &#8220We’ve been treated with nothing but hospitality and kindness.”

The ship is on its way to the Caribbean for a rally of tall ships, but stopped here to wait out the end of hurricane season.

&#8220We can’t go below the 32nd parallel before Dec. 1, which is just below Natchez,” Sloane said.

To get to Vicksburg, the ship left Ottawa June 16 and and docked in Chicago Oct. 19. From there it was into the Illinois River to Grafton, where the Illinois feeds into the Mississippi.

&#8220We’ve been traveling as a motor boat for the past several weeks because the bridges are so low and there’s so much traffic,” Sloane said. &#8220It’s just safer for our boat, our crew and other boats on the waterways to use the motor rather than worry with the sails.”

The ship will leave Vicksburg between Nov. 28 and Nov. 30 and will travel down river to Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It will then travel into the Gulf of Mexico and on to the Bahamas, where the crew will spend Christmas and New Year’s before reaching their final destination of the Caribbean in early January.

&#8220We’ll leave to head back toward Florida mid-February and meet up with other tall ships to go to the Halifax boat races in the spring,” he said.

And from there, the ship will head back to Ottawa in September, where it will be stored for the winter months before its next excursion in spring 2008.

&#8220The boat always needs something done to it,” Sloane said. &#8220We have modern equipment, but we try to use as much traditional equipment as possible.”

The ship features everyday amenities such as a full-size pantry and kitchen complete with a range, microwave and toaster.

&#8220We’re fortunate enough to have furnaces on board that double as air conditioners in the summer,” Sloane said.

Although the ship will comfortably fit about 32 crew members during the summer and about 20 this time of the year, only seven are on board.

&#8220We’ll pick up a few more still along the way,” he said. &#8220It’s not the Queen Mary by any stretch of the mountain, but we’re comfortable.”

Sloane and his crew are welcoming visitors on board for a tour of the ship during their stay in Vicksburg.

Additionally, the Delta Queen and the Mississippi Queen steamboats were docked in Vicksburg today from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., marking the first time since before Hurricane Katrina both passenger boats have made a stop in the River City.

The last simultaneous stop here was in June 2005, when both the 416-passenger Mississippi Queen and 174-passenger Delta Queen docked here in the Great Steamboat Race, an annual re-enactment of the 1870 race between the steamboats Robert E. Lee and Natchez.

Both boats are on a seven-day excursion from Memphis to New Orleans with stops here and in Natchez, St. Francisville and Baton Rouge. The excursion marks the end of the 2006 season, which began in April.

Delta Queen Steamboat Company President Bruce Nierenberg said in January that New Orleans, the company’s home port, would not be equipped to handle guests until March, which is when the company plans to have the boats steam from New Orleans.

The Delta Queen will begin steaming out of its home port on March 17 with several cruises between New Orleans and Memphis in March and April, taking passengers to explore the lower Mississippi River. The Mississippi Queen will have its first cruise upriver on April 15.

Also at City Front this morning were the Sweet Olive, a tour boat used for guided trips along the canal and the Mississippi River, and Horizon’s casino, a gambling boat in its own cofferdam.