“I fell in love with it the first day,” recalled Stonington high school junior Tabor Johnson, of his ten-day cruise on the schooner HARVEY GAMAGE when he was in eighth grade. By then, Tabor had been on the water for five years: he’d started lobstering in his 16-foot outboard with his father, Stonington Harbormaster and Commercial Fish Pier Manager Steven Johnson. The eighth grader had more than the $300, a special price for island kids, to pay for the cruise.

In talking with crewmembers, he found a lot of them had taken a high school semester aboard the HARVEY GAMAGE, WESTWARD or SPIRIT OF MASSACHUSETTS, schooners involved in an educational program called Ocean Classroom. They recommended it.

Ocean Classroom is accredited by Proctor Academy, of Andover, NH. Courses taught include Marine Science, Maritime History, Maritime Literature, Applied Marine Mathematics, and Navigation. Ocean Classroom is affiliated with College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor and the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, MA.

Now 16, Tabor was finally old enough to apply and was accepted to spend the spring semester of 2006 aboard WESTWARD, but got a shock when he found out what that semester at sea would cost him and his parents. Tuition would be $14,850 and books and materials. A field trip would be an additional $850.

Fortunately, he got a scholarship of $7,000, leaving a balance due of $8,700. An aunt donated $1,500 toward the $2,500 deposit and Tabor came up with the rest out of his lobstermen’s earnings and those from working as a dock hand for two summers at Billings Diesel and Marine, bringing the balance due down to $6,200.

He wrote a letter about the opportunity he’d been given and sent it out to businesses and other people on Deer Isle. He put donation boxes at Deer Isle’s spiffy new restaurant, “The Whale’s Rib” and at the Commercial Fish Pier. Among the donations, Tabor found a letter in the donation box at the Fish Pier. It was from a girl who had taken the Ocean Classroom semester at sea, then took a job as an apprentice on a windjammer out of Rockland, which was moored off Stonington for the day. She told him how she had loved her semester at sea and enclosed the only money she had in her pocket: $10. He was touched and said, “I’ll keep that letter for the rest of my life.”

That girl was not his only benefactor: People have been generous. Even the New York Yacht Club, on its annual cruise through the Deer Isle Thorofare, donated $200. Tabor’s mother and aunt held a yard sale. Tabor said, “I called as many people as I could to ask them if they would donate items for the yard sale. We made over $500.”

The donations and the yard sale have helped, but he still has $2,715.25 to go. He’s planning a bottle drive and will do just about anything to make that semester at sea come to fruition. As he wrote his fellow islanders, “I love the sea and don’t want to imagine a learning or working life away from it. Any donations would be greatly appreciated.”

If you’d like to help Tabor, please make donations payable to Ocean Classroom and note “Tabor Johnson” in the memo section. Donations are tax deductible. Mail to him at 28 Neil’s Cove Lane, Stonington, ME 04681. To learn more about Ocean Classroom go to www.oceanclassroom.org.