State of Maine returns to MMA after 2 months at sea

CASTINE – Two months and about 9,000 miles later, the State of Maine, Maine Maritime Academy’s training vessel, returned to its home port Tuesday, bringing with it 215 seasoned sailors.

To the sounds of cheers and applause, the 500-foot ship eased through the waters of Castine Harbor, accompanied by a small flotilla of local boats, including the academy’s historic schooner Bowdoin.

“The cruise went beautifully,” Capt. Jeff Loustaunau, the commandant of midshipmen at MMA, said as the students left the ship. “The ship worked well and everyone is more accomplished.”

Although the ship arrived on schedule, family members, sweethearts and friends waited patiently – and not so patiently – while the ship was secured.

The cruise took the students, along with 52 staff and crew, to ports in Tampa, Mexico, Bermuda and Puerto Rico as part of the sea-time requirement for students seeking a U.S. Coast Guard license as a third mate or third assistant engineer. Students cruise on the State of Maine at the end of their freshman and junior years. They also ship out on commercial vessels at the end of their sophomore year.

“It was awesome,” said Beth Chasse, a freshman from East Millinocket for whom the cruise was her first time out on the water. “I loved it. At first I was afraid I’d be seasick. But it wasn’t bad at all.”

Students are kept busy during their time on board.

“There’s a lot of work,” said freshman Marc Veilleux of Mount Desert. “After muster at 7:20 a.m., you were busy from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. But, liberty was a good time.”

Students are divided into companies and rotate duties between utility (cleaning), maintenance, watch and training.

“The students are busy from the time they get up to the time they go to bed at night,” said MMA President Leonard Tyler, who joined the cruise for an alumni reception in Tampa and sailed with the students to San Juan, Puerto Rico. “They’re training and polishing, chipping paint or painting, or taking a piece of an engine apart.”

Students run all operations of the ship during the cruise with upperclassmen supervising the newer students, all under the eye of the professional crew. For John Gilmore, a junior from Hampton, N.H., taking the second training cruise brought more responsibility.

“You’re more of a leader,” Gilmore said. “You don’t have to take orders. You do things yourself or you give orders, and hope things get done and that the ship doesn’t break down.

“It felt good, but it took a little getting used to,” he said.

Having the students on board the training ship for two cruises is a good method for training future merchant mariners, according to Tyler.

“We’re right there to make sure they’re getting the training they need,” he said.

The crowd that greeted the returning ship was smaller than usual, not because of the weather, which cleared off after a morning shower, but because many of the parents of upper class students traveled with the ship from Rockland to Castine. Under a special excursion permit from the U.S. Coast Guard, the State of Maine was allowed to carry extra passengers on the last leg of the voyage.

“It was a beautiful day,” said Dorothy Thompson of Nantucket, Mass., whose daughter Heather graduated in May. “And it was a great trip. We’d seen it come in last year in Portland. It was an experience to watch it come in from the other perspective.”

Although students were reunited with their families and friends on Tuesday and disembarked from the State of Maine carrying luggage and their gear, the cruise does not officially end until today and they still have some work to do, according to Capt. Loustaunau.

“As soon as the ship is cleaned up, it’s over,” he said. “If it’s not clean, it’s not over.”