CASTINE – The crew of the schooner Bowdoin is ready to cast off lines and start another summer season of sailing, this year heading south instead of north.

The Bowdoin is set to leave its Maine Maritime Academy berth this morning for a monthlong training cruise, part of an eight-week summer course that began earlier this month. The crew will sail the 80-foot historic schooner to ports in Virginia, Maryland, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island and will participate in the Tall Ships Challenge, where the schooner will join 50 tall ships from the U.S. and abroad.

This is the third year for this sail training course, which has two parts, according to the schooner’s captain, Rick Miller. For the first month, the student crewmembers work on preparing the schooner for the sailing season. Like many sailing vessels, the Bowdoin is stripped of its gear, which is stored indoors and protected by a plastic covering.

“That cover comes off and they learn and do what is needed to get the vessel up and ready for sailing,” Miller said Tuesday. “That in itself is valuable experience to have.”

Those preparations can range from the mundane, but important, tasks of sanding and painting the boat, to the more intricate chore of rigging the vessel. The land-based portion of the course also focuses on voyage planning and preparation, weather, communications, approaching everything both traditionally and with the use of modern technology, Miller said.

“When we cast off lines, our focus changes dramatically to sailing a boat,” he said.

That aspect of the course includes intensive training all the time focusing on everything it takes to sail a vessel from one point to another: seamanship, watch standing, modern and traditional navigation techniques, underway maintenance and cooking.

Most of the student crew has just finished their first year at MMA, and though some have had previous sailing experience, none is required for this course. Most are still “pretty green,” Miller said, and the course provides an introduction to these skills.

All of the students in the course are enrolled in MMA’s small vessels operations and prepares them for an auxiliary sail endorsement for the Coast Guard license. The cruise is part of the training to prepare them for what is becoming a growing field of traditional sailing vessels.

“There’s a lot more interest in traditional vessels. More states have official sailing vessels for their states,” Miller said. “We’re getting more and more calls from traditional vessels looking for crew that are trained.”

The first stop on the cruise will be in Norfolk, Va., where the Bowdoin will join the Tall Ship Challenge, organized by the American Sail Training Association, which works each year organizing events on each coast and on the Great Lakes to increase awareness of these traditional sailing vessels.

More than 50 traditional sailing vessels are expected to take part in the events at Norfolk, including as many as 10 of the larger, fully rigged vessels. The Bowdoin is scheduled to arrive in Virginia by June 7 and will participate in a parade of sails into Norfolk Harbor. The ships will then tie up and will be open to the public.

The presence of the schooner is a chance for MMA to highlight the college’s programs and it offers the students the opportunity to see different sailing vessels and to meet their crews. The Bowdoin will rejoin the Challenge in Newport, R.I., before returning to its home port in Castine June 30.