CASTINE – Maine Maritime Academy students, officers and crew will visit Gibraltar, May 21-24; Odessa, Ukraine, May 31-June 3; and Split, Croatia, June 8-11, as part of the college’s annual two-month training cruise to foreign and domestic ports-of-call.

The ship will make its final port call in Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 24-27, and will make a brief stop in Rockland for a family day sail on the return leg to Castine.

Under the command of Capt. Larry Wade of Bradley, the training ship State of Maine will depart from Castine harbor at approximately 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 8. The training cruise will commence in port on Friday, May 4, for a week of preparation.

According to Captain Wade, students participating in the training cruise will have the opportunity to sail to port cities in Southern and Eastern Europe, requiring transit of some of the world’s most historically significant waterways. Students will visit Gibraltar and its massive rock fortress marking the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. While in Gibraltar, the ship’s berthing arrangements will be handled at the discretion of the Queen’s Harbourmaster.

Students will travel on the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish Strait of Bosporus while en route to the Black Sea port of Odessa in Eastern Europe. The port visit to Odessa marks the first time a Maine Maritime Academy ship has visited a Black Sea port. The Odessa National Maritime Academy, a fellow member of the International Association of Maritime Universities, will serve as host to the training ship.

As a founding member of the association, Maine Maritime Academy enjoys cooperative relationships with 43 member institutions. MMA President Leonard Tyler serves as chairman of the organization and will hold a meeting of the group’s international executive board on the training ship. Odessa National Maritime Academy is scheduled to be the host for the association’s upcoming annual general assembly in September.

The International Association of Maritime Universities was established in 1999 by The Nippon Foundation of Tokyo. It seeks to establish a worldwide network among maritime universities of excellence and to enhance the safety of international ocean traffic through the establishment of an international maritime society to promote the scientific and academic approach to maritime education and training.

The port of Split, Croatia, located on the Adriatic Sea, will be the final port of call in the Mediterranean Basin.

After a trans-Atlantic crossing, the ship will call at the Canadian port of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“Follow the Voyage,” MMA’s annual online ship tracking and interactive Web site, will be coordinated by students and staff as part of this year’s training activities. Follow the Voyage is developed and presented in conjunction with a number of external partners including the Maine Department of Education and the U.S. Maritime Administration.

In its fifth year of operation, the site covers the academy’s annual training cruise from a variety of perspectives and contains a number of related links. In addition to an interactive tracking chart of the cruise, the site provides links devoted to teaching and educational materials for students of all ages. Once the ship is under way, the public is invited to join the voyage by visiting www.mma.edu and following the highlighted hyperlink.

Due to heightened shipboard security, the vessel will not be open to the general public for tours while in foreign or domestic ports.

Well-wishers are encouraged to view the vessel’s departure from and return to the Maine Maritime Academy waterfront. However, shipboard visits are not permitted.

On the return leg to Castine from Rockland, upper-classmen may invite their parents to join them. The day sail allows parents the opportunity to see the high level of technical proficiency and leadership achieved by the students. The training ship will return to its homeport of Castine on Saturday, June 30.

Arrival in Castine Harbor is expected at approximately 6 p.m., with docking anticipated at 6:30 p.m. Training cruise activity will continue in port through Monday, July 2.

In the days immediately following the completion of training cruise, the ship will embark for routine five-year dry-docking in compliance with regulations of the American Bureau of Shipping and the U.S. Coast Guard.

The ship will be sailed to and from dry-dock by its regular professional crew and attended by them throughout the maintenance period. The dry-dock period is expected to take place throughout July and into late August.

Students pursuing an officer’s license from the U.S. Coast Guard as a third mate or third assistant engineer are required to train at sea for at least 60 days in each of their first three years at the academy.

Freshmen and juniors sail aboard the MMA vessel, while sophomores are assigned to merchant ships worldwide. In recent years, MMA training cruises have taken students to Aruba, Bermuda, Brazil, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland Italy, Poland, Russia and Spain; as well as other European and Caribbean countries.

The 500-foot, 16,000-ton State of Maine, the USNS Tanner, originally served as a Navy oceanographic research vessel and was converted in 1997 to accommodate the training needs of the college. The fourth vessel to bear the name State of Maine, the ship is a modern, technologically advanced training vessel.