January 07, 2025
Archive

Historic schooner heading north MMA’s Bowdoin earns its keep

CASTINE – The wind didn’t cooperate last week for a shakedown cruise on Maine Maritime Academy’s schooner Bowdoin, but a student crew hoisted the new suit of sails on the historic Arctic vessel as they prepared to take it north again on a monthlong trip to Newfoundland.

The voyage, which will include a week of offshore sailing, is part of a pilot course at the college designed as an introduction to overall maintenance and operation of a large, traditional sailing vessel. The course is designed for students with little or no prior sailing or boating experience, according to Andy Chase, the course coordinator who will sail as captain on the cruise.

“The idea is to take students who have just completed their first year, many of whom will not know anything about sailing a big vessel,” Chase said. “Their first experience will be to spend a month fitting out and learning the boat and then sailing her living together in close quarters, cooking for each other.

“The goals are pretty straightforward: to get on the boat and do what’s necessary to get it there and back again.”

The 13 students have been living in the MMA dorms since early May and are scheduled to move onto the Bowdoin on Wednesday. The Bowdoin will leave Castine a week later on June 1 and return June 30.

While they’re sailing, students will learn modern methods of navigation, using electronic charts, radar and sonar, but they also will learn to do without modern conveniences, Chase said.

“We’ll do some celestial navigation,” he said. “We’ll use radar some days, but then we’ll switch it off. We’ll sail by dead reckoning. We make them do it all.”

Although technically a two-month course, the students have been making preparations most of the year, working on the voyage plans, working on charts, making customs arrangements and securing berths for the vessel. The voyage plan includes a stop, weather permitting, at Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia, at the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, before reaching Placentia on the southern coast of Newfoundland.

The trip south will take the Bowdoin and crew along Newfoundland’s southern coast, through the Bras d’Or Lakes on Cape Breton Island before heading back to Castine.

The course officially started May 4. Students motored the Bowdoin back from the shipyard and then began the task of outfitting it for the course under the direction of outfitting captain John Worth. Outfitting the schooner involves a variety of tasks, ranging from pitching the decks and painting scrollwork to provisioning the vessel and rigging the Bowdoin’s new suit of sails.

“An 88-foot vessel takes a lot of care and feeding,” Worth said. “And this is the time to do those kinds of things. This is pretty valuable training. There’s a new interest in that license. A lot of students are picking MMA for the Bowdoin and this auxiliary training.”

Although there was little wind last week during the shakedown cruise, it was an important first time out for all involved, Worth said, especially since the schooner had new sails.

“We didn’t do much sailing, but this was important,” he said. “It’s the only way you really get a chance to see how the sails bend onto the spars. And we found some things we’ve got to fix.”

The course, which will become part of the academy’s small vessel operations program, will help prepare students for an auxiliary sail license, which is becoming a sought after commodity in MMA graduates.

“We’re learning a lot,” said Dylan Clark of Durham, who sailed on the Bowdoin last year. “We helped do the rigging this year, and it was interesting to see everything go from being a mess in the storage room to all kinds of running rigging.”

Students signed up for the course for a variety of reasons. Meghan Donohue, a sophomore from Southington, Conn., had already graduated from the University of San Diego and came to MMA to earn her captain’s license. Although she has been on extended cruises, she has never sailed north before.

“That’s the best place to really learn to sail, because it’s the harshest ocean of all,” Donohue said. “I’m looking forward to the deep water sailing, where you can’t see land at all. That’s where it all starts. You pretty much survive on your own.”

Two student crew members already have their licenses and are sailing as the second and third mates for the cruise. Senior Michael Fabio of Falmouth, whose sail to Newfoundland on the Bowdoin as a high school student first attracted him to MMA, will serve as third mate.

“This is a time for me to step up to the plate,” he said. “I’ve got the licenses. It’s time for me to start taking more responsibility to make sure everybody is safe. It’s sort of a trial by fire to see if I’m up to making a rugged offshore trip. I’m confident I am.”

According to Chase, there is space available on the Bowdoin for a member of the public for the first leg of the journey June 1-14. Prospective participants must be at least 17 years old. The tuition for the trip is $2,000.

Contact: Andy Chase, e-mail: achase@mma.edu, or 326-2126.


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like