The first time Maine Maritime Academy (MMA) graduate David Harrison went sailing, he hoisted the jib upside down, didn’t tie the jib sheets correctly and almost lost the boat. “That was my initiation,” he said.
He hadn’t learned how to sail at the academy — he’d graduated in 1962 — but it looked interesting, so in 1968, together with a friend who’d done some sailing, he bought a 25-foot wooden sloop and had that Keystone Cops first experience.
But Harrison loved sailing, kept at it and improved, eventually bought his friend out, and has sailed ever since, moving up, in 1992, to a 36-foot Allied Princess ketch.
Although he’d shipped out for four years after graduating from MMA, being away from home for four and a half months at a time strained his marriage, so he came ashore and started working at the Champion Paper Mill in Bucksport. Although Harrison’s career at the mill started by his doing anything nobody else was willing to do, he worked his way into the power plant, used his education and rose to superintendent of the mill’s Power and Utility department, a position he held for 15 years. He retired in 2000 and joined with another sailing friend, Massachusetts Maritime Academy graduate Richard Probert, of Albany, N.Y., to start their East Coast Boat Delivery Service. Probert’s letter to prospective clients starts with the following sentence: “With thousands of miles of offshore, coastal and inland sailing and over eighty years of combined experience, Dave and I are well prepared to bid on your and/or your client’s relocation needs.”
A planner-ahead, Harrison, a Verona Island resident, said, “I like to sail and like to sail a lot of different boats, so I probably wouldn’t be successful if I couldn’t prove that I knew what I was doing, so I went back to school to get my U. S. Coast Guard captain’s license.”
The school he chose, Vineyard Maritime, now called the Down East Maritime Training Center, was out in the woods in inland Freedom, Maine, run by Martha’s Vineyard native and Massachusetts Maritime Academy graduate Shawn J. Ahern, III, who has his Doctorate of Business Education. Ahern now also teaches his courses through Maine Maritime Academy’s Department of Continuing Education.
The courses Harrison took were classroom-based training: the 90-hour, 100-ton Master’s licensing requirement and the 40-hour Radar Observer.
With those licensing and certification requirements completed, Harrison felt competent to reach out to prospective clients. He noted, though, “Like any other thing, when you go to school, after that is when you begin to learn. Each voyage has been a learning experience.” He added that most of his learning experiences have been positive, but explained, “It has to be clearly understood by all hands on the boat who is in charge and responsible for the vessel and boat handling for the safe operation of the vessel. Without that being clearly understood, there may be dissention when it comes to decision making.”
Harrison and Probert have found most success working through Eric Weiberg, who finds clients for captains. “He puts a boat delivery bid on the Internet,” Harrison explained, “and we bid on it. The customer selects the deliverer based on capability, experience, and cost. If we get the job, we pay [Weiberg] 10 percent.”
He added, “Because we go through the bid process, documentation such as the U.S. Coast Guard Captain’s license is a good way to demonstrate to a prospective customer that we are knowledgeable and competent.”
Harrison feels some newer sailboats are not suitable for offshore sailing because of their design and construction. He mentioned in particular those boats with flat bottoms, thin keels, or composite construction hulls. If owners of such boats elect to take an offshore route, they must not only be careful of weather conditions, he said, but must at all times also have an alternate route plan for a safe harbor. “If you’re 125 miles offshore and the weather turns bad, it’s going to take you 24 hours to reach shore,” he explained. “Your boat goes six knots; you have to keep that in mind all the time.”
He and his partner try to keep a safe harbor within eight hours’ sailing or motoring time whenever possible, though he admitted that’s not always possible and used rounding Cape Hatteras as an example. “It’s a very stormy place where the Gulf Stream comes close to land and the water is relatively shallow (100 to 200 feet). There aren’t any safe harbors for quite a distance,” he said, “so you subscribe to a weather service and get four- to-five-day weather forecasts before you leave.” Although Harrison and Probert feel they have to make as much distance as possible each day without compromising safety, he said they just don’t go if the forecast is poor, though if they’re weather-bound they’ll still get paid by the 24-hour day.
He has also found that any boat that has not been sailed in rough water for a couple of years will encounter fuel filter problems from accumulated dirt in the fuel tank being agitated by the water. “We won’t leave unless we have at least four sets of spare fuel filters,” he said. He and Probert also perform a seaworthiness inspection of every vessel they deliver that includes a detailed inspection, an inventory of spare parts and an appraisal of the general condition of the vessel. This inspection and inventory is the result of having found such incipient disasters as the engine cooling supply hose lying on the alternator pulley and cut nearly through, a sea suction strainer with no strainer in it, water tanks contaminated by algae and fuel hoses cracked and sucking air.
In August, Harrison made an instructional delivery. A new boat owner and his wife hired him to take their boat from Searsport to Northeast Harbor and return. During the voyage, Harrison taught them how to operate the vessel, do voyage planning, piloting, GPS and radar operations. He finds voyage planning one of the most important facets of any trip. “If you don’t preplan routes ahead with waypoints before leaving, conditions may arise when you don’t have time to do it on the boat, on the way. Consequently, you may get disoriented.”
Harrison said, “The successful person is the person who makes money doing what he would normally do when he goes on vacation.” For someone who loves to sail, he seems to have hit on the perfect job.