MMA set to launch schooner Bowdoin event

CASTINE – It’s time to take the wraps off the Maine Maritime Academy’s historic schooner Bowdoin and get the 86-year-old arctic sailing vessel ready for another sailing season.

MMA students, staff, faculty and other volunteers will begin preparing the schooner for the summer as part of the Fifth Annual Schooner Bowdoin Day from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 14, at the college’s waterfront campus.

Activities will include removing the plastic winter covering from the vessel and, if the weather cooperates, moving the main boom into place.

The annual spring workday aboard the schooner also will include a waterfront barbecue and a birthday cake for the vessel. The Bowdoin was launched on April 9, 1921, by Hodgdon Brothers Shipyard in East Boothbay.

The schooner serves as a traditional training platform for MMA and is expected to sail approximately 5,000 nautical miles this summer, offering several sail-training voyages and participating in tall ship events on the East Coast.

Bowdoin Day also offers students the opportunity to display projects they have worked on during the winter months.

Students enrolled in the Small Craft Construction course will showcase their semester project in support of the Bowdoin, the newly crafted sail/rowing tender, Cap’n Mac. The tender will serve as the tender for the schooner during the 2007 season, offer efficient launch service and allow for rowing instruction.

Cap’n Mac, named for the famed Captain Donald MacMillan who sailed the Bowdoin on almost two dozen voyages to the Arctic, was constructed by MMA students on site, under the direction of Capt. Rick Miller and student Chris Grindle. Students will letter the new boat’s stern as part of the day’s activities.

There also will be a launching of a student project vessel named ZEEBOAT that involved the redesign and refurbishing of a donated boat.

The vessel was refitted with a propulsion system similar to modern Z-Drive tractor tugs that use two propellers to enable 360-degree steering.

ZEEBOAT complements the Z-Drive tug software used in the college’s ship handling simulator and offers a real-life version as part of the college’s waterfront fleet.

Other activities will include polishing brass funnels on deck; making baggy wrinkles, traditional anti-chafe sail gear; general vessel cleaning projects; and moving small boats out of storage and into the college boat basin.