The dream is huge, visionary – a mission: to build a ship sufficiently large and accessible that four or five families with disabled children confined to a wheelchair can enjoy a hands-on sailing experience aboard a tall ship. The dream is to allow the families to spend the day on board, with family members helping sail and navigate the ship in whatever way they are capable. The nonprofit program, Accessible Sailing Adventures (ASA), is unique in the United States. Only one other, in Great Britain, is designed specifically to accommodate people in wheelchairs.
The ship, an 88-foot, three-masted galleon modeled after 14th century English racing galleons, is called the RAWFAITH, and every step of the way towards building her beside the Pleasant River in Addison has been impelled by just that – the raw faith of each person who has been involved, either through monetary or other contributions or volunteer work.
The inspiration for the project grew from the raw faith George McKay says he and his wife, Jo Anne, both in their mid-40s, have witnessed daily in their daughter Elizabeth (Liz), who has been confined to a wheelchair since she was 12. Now 22, Liz remains active, outgoing and upbeat, although she has endured several operations and must deal with continuous pain and weakness as a result of a genetic disease, Marfans Syndrome, which attacks connective tissue. She also has had multiple surgeries for heart defects and lives with numerous other physical problems.
George McKay says when the idea to build RAWFAITH and develop ASA came to him, it was six months before he could bring himself to share the dream with his wife. Although he had completed small home projects with his sons, he had no boatbuilding, carpentry or sailing experience. “I had never even dreamt of building a boat,” he says. Trained as an electrical engineer, he had held several different high tech, high paying positions which provided his family with a comfortable life and a beautiful home on Annabessacook Lake in Winthrop. To follow this dream would mean giving up all that. But he believed and continues to believe the project is the most important thing he and his family can be doing.
To George McKay, families are an essential part of the dream. Parents with disabled children have a considerably higher rate of divorce, he explains. The stress and demands on all family members are great, and although there are camps designed for disabled children, there are few recreational opportunities for families as a unit. They need to have fun together, he emphasizes. He wants ASA to make that possible.
But first, RAWFAITH has to be launched. He and other volunteers have worked steadily through the summer to meet an Oct. 6 launch date set four years ago when they obtained the first white oak logs for the keel and hull.
The volunteers include the McKays’ sons, Aaron, 21; Tom, 19; and Robert, 13. This summer, they exchanged the usual pursuits of young men their age to work six-and-one-half days a week, enveloped by the smell and stickiness of pitch used to caulk her hull, and plagued by successive waves of bugs: black flies, no-see-ums, green heads, mosquitoes. Working on the hull, they have cut boards, nailed them with a nailing gun, slathered them with pitch, drilled holes every five inches, and then pounded 8-inch galvanized spikes through the three layers of oak to secure them to the ribs.
During the past three years, Aaron and Tom camped out with their father at the site, cooking canned food on a camp stove so they could work on the boat during the week, return to their home in Winthrop for the weekends. Robert, who was home-schooled, joined them when he could. Last September, the family sold the Winthrop home and rented a house in Addison so they could all be together near the construction site.
Other volunteers include Ian Jerolmack, 27, who discovered the project a couple of months ago while bicycling from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the Maritimes and never left. Randy Van Osten, who came with the New Jersey Agape Mission Projects to help the McKays, also felt compelled to stay and help get RAWFAITH in the water.
The Agape visit in August, arranged by a friend of the McKays from Machias, gave RAWFAITH construction a huge boost. For five days, 20 to 40 Agape members arrived at the boat ready to work, bringing food for themselves and all other volunteers. Jo Anne McKay remembers this with special gratitude, as she feeds the eight regular members of the crew three meals a day in addition to handling laundry and housecleaning and taking Liz to thrice-weekly physical therapy appointments plus numerous other doctors’ appointments.
When Agape volunteers left, the four decks, 86 by 26 feet, were meticulously caulked and finished, skin planking was almost one-half completed, and the bowsprit and figurehead installed. The mission has continued to support the project with money, material, time and energy.
One Agape member and friends are sewing 2,500 square feet of sails for the RAWFAITH. Guided by “The Sail Maker’s Apprentice,” they cut the sails on a high school gym floor in New Jersey. They are sewing them with an industrial machine that a volunteer from New Hampshire, Hank Carignan, whose daughter has a summer home near the construction site, found near his home and donated to the cause.
There have been setbacks. Among them are the loss of four months’ work time during the move from Winthrop, rejected grant proposals, and the rapid depletion of resources. (George McKay estimates they have spent about $300,000 so far, including most of their savings and funds from the house sale). Still, there has been the satisfaction of reaching interim goals. “When you can look back and say, ‘We’re done with the bulkheads; we’re done with the ribs,’ those are good moments,” says Tom McKay. And there has been a growing stream of local support such as chainsaw artist Ray Murphy’s donation of the figurehead, the donation of $6,000 worth of nuts and bolts by Leroy Newall of Eastport, the generosity of the McKays’ landlord, who after 10 months of collecting rent, told them to keep their money; and the offer from a local fisherman to use his dragger as a tug to take the RAWFAITH to Eastern Harbor. There, she will have her masts fitted and nautical, navigational and accessibility systems installed.
ASA has a website created and manned by volunteer John Davis, a McKay family friend in Winthrop. The site, www.accessiblesailing.info, won the site of the month award in August from Disability Central. It includes updates on construction, profiles of crew members, photos of visitors who join the Spiker’s Club, correspondence from supporters, and a signup list for volunteers. There’s also information on the launch and a schedule of visits to ports in November.
The entire family plans to participate in the maiden voyage from Maine to Florida, stopping in ports to invite families with disabled children on board for a day’s sail, and ask them for input on ways to improve the accessibility apparatus.
Liz McKay is excited about the impending move to the boat and is working with her professional caregivers on ways to handle her medical needs while living on board RAWFAITH. “If we weren’t doing this,” she says, “I think I would eventually move to a group home somewhere in the Midwest. I can’t do winter, and I can’t take care of myself without a lot of assistance. This way, I’m going to new places, but bringing my home and care with me, and I’m inviting other families to be a part of the adventure.”