When the fabled schooner BOWDOIN departs for one of its voyages from Maine Maritime Academy in Castine this summer, it will be under the command of two women – for the first time in the vessel’s history.
Captain Heather Stone, from Michigan by way of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, will be in command, and her first mate will be Jen Haddock, who grew up in Camden. What also makes the pair interesting is that neither is a graduate of MMA: Stone graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in anthropology and Haddock from the University of Rhode Island with a degree in engineering and a graduate degree in marine affairs.
Although both arrived at the BOWDOIN by different paths, they share a passion for sailing and education.
“Basically, I like the teaching aspect,” says Stone, whose crews this summer will be variously MMA students and high school age students. “We’ll be starting out the first week in June and sail until the end of October. All will be enrolled in sail training programs and everybody will be functioning as crew members.”
“We’re not sure yet. Probably Nova Scotia and Downeast.”
Stone has worked her way to this position “from the fo’c’sle,” so to speak. She has worked as a cook, deckhand and second mate and engineer on vessels including the PACIFIC and the SPIRIT OF MASSACHUSETTS.
“I started out with a student background and worked on different vessels honing my navigational skills,” Stone says. “In ’95, I sailed on the 88-foot schooner OCEAN STAR- a bad hurricane year. We were trying to make it to Bermuda but ended up riding out the hurricane just off the coast. But I learned celestial navigation.”
After receiving her Mount Holyoke degree in 1993, Stone worked for the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “Four weeks onshore, four weeks at sea. I fell in love with it. I decided if I was going to do something like this, now was the time, and I went to work for the Tall Ships education program.”
She adds, “It’s never too late to change what you’re doing; I figure it’s never too early, either.”
She first sailed aboard the BOWDOIN in 1996. “That’s when I met Elliot Rappaport (the schooner’s permanent skipper). Then I talked with a friend from high school who was a student at MMA, and he encouraged me to send in my resume. The first offer I got was as a cook, but I turned it down; I didn’t want to cook. I’d done that, and I wanted to go back to being a deckhand. So I told Elliot if anything else came up to keep me in mind. A few months later he came back to me with the position of second mate and engineer, and I took it.”
Stone is captain this season because Rappaport has decided to take a leave of absence. “I’ll be trying to fill his shoes; it’s not easy to do.”
What’s next?
Stone laughed, “Well, we’ve got to paint her before we go anywhere,” she said.
After graduating from URI in 1992, first mate Haddock added a graduate degree in marine affairs in 2000. Like Stone, she has sailed aboard the OCEAN STAR “but for the last three years I’ve worked at Sea Education Associates – however, after upgrading my license to meet Coast Guard requirements, I decided I ought to put it to work. I’m good friends with Elliot. and I told him I wanted to get my feet back on a deck and to come back to Maine.”
Haddock will serve “as Heather’s backup” and as medical officer. The medical training comes from 10 years with Outward Bound.
Although Haddock has never sailed aboard the BOWDOIN, she does have some family history with the schooner. “I don’t know the details,” she said, “but my great-grandfather sailed to the Arctic with Admiral MacMillan.” Donald B. MacMillan had the vessel built in the 1920s for Arctic exploration and sailed her north numerous times.