Alumnae Profile

Heather L. Stone '93

Captain Courageous

Heather Stone '93 Sails the Seas—At the Helm
by Tracey Karsten Farrell '75

The stirring first stanza of John Masefield's poem “Sea Fever” (below) must particularly resonate with Heather L. Stone '93, a licensed sea captain and the first female captain ever hired by Maine Maritime Academy. Stone has accumulated more than 2,000 days at sea on a variety of sailing craft all over the world. “The experiences I've had on the water have promoted clarity of thought and vision, and a centeredness I have rarely felt on land,” she says. “I'm more aware of the things I have control of, and the things I do not; the things I can change, the things I can't; and the value of hard work and teamwork. I feel more in tune with the universe and myself; less object oriented and more experience oriented.”

I must down to the seas again,
to the lonely sea and the sky
And all I ask is a tall ship
and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the
wind's song and the white
sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's
face, and a grey dawn breaking.…

Stone's journey began right after graduation, when she enrolled in the summer session of Sea Education Association (SEA) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (www.sea.edu). Although she had rowed crew while at Mount Holyoke and had a little experience with board boats and windsurfing, working a “tall ship” was another matter. She joined a class of forty eager neophytes and spent four weeks learning about nautical science, oceanography, and maritime history and literature.

The program's second half tested her classroom knowledge aboard the SSV Westward. “I had been warned by a friend who had been a student at SEA not to take very many clothes, but to take every pair of underwear I owned,” Stone smiles. The only storage space on board was the small shelves in the bunks, so the more stuff, the less space to sleep. Students took saltwater showers and learned about running the ship from galley to engine, deck to rigging. “The quiet aboard, punctuated by periods of frenetic activity, soothed my soul, and I began to blossom in this different environment,” Stone recalls. She fell in love with shipboard life, and after her student sojourn ended, stayed to work as a deckhand for $5 a day. The Westward offered food, a place to live, and ample opportunity to learn while working. But when the ship headed to the Caribbean for a fall cruise with the next crop of students, she had to go ashore.

Stone's next job, in a small oceanographic consulting firm, kept her near the water, but she had difficulty adjusting to life on shore. “The smell of the salt air and the sight of sails on the horizon were enough to bring back the days and nights I spent on Westward, being rocked to sleep by the motion of the waves. I missed the simple life and the feeling of self-reliance,” she explains. She began applying for jobs training others to sail. “But because I had so little experience, they weren't breaking down my doors to hire me.” Undeterred, she moved her worldly goods into her parents' New Hampshire barn, packed a duffel bag, and went looking on her own. Her first ship sailed out of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1994 and sparked a career that culminated as captain of the sail-training schooner Bowdoin, a national historical landmark tall ship.

Built in 1921 for Arctic research and exploration, the Bowdoin was one of the world's first sail-training vessels. She has modern safety and communications equipment today, but the rest is based on 1921 marine technology. Stone joined the Bowdoin as engineer in 1996, responsible for the day-to-day preventive maintenance of the vessel's machinery. She had no prior experience with engines, but she was a quick study. And the more she learned, the more she wanted to know. Once she mastered the engine room and logged the necessary days at sea (365 documented days under way), she sat for her Coast Guard mate's license. In 1998, she moved on to become the Bowdoin's chief mate, first in charge after the captain. Becoming a fully licensed captain was the next obvious step. “I kept finding jobs on board that made me happy,” Stone says. “So if you've accumulated all these hours at sea, why not sit for your captain's license?”

Being a sea captain is a challenge in many ways, not the least of which is running the vessel. The crew of an educational ship, in addition to sailing and navigating the boat, serve as the police, firefighters, plumbers, electricians, riggers, sail makers, carpenters, cooks, teachers, weather forecasters, hospital workers, and diesel mechanics. “We know a little about a lot of things. We have books and modern-day communications to aid us in diagnosing problems (particularly medical issues), but when we are at sea, we are our own little planet with finite resources.”

Stone has since left the Bowdoin and plans a longer stay ashore. This summer, she'll attend a career-exploration seminar at Harvard to consider the field of design/build architecture. Sustainable designs and alternative energy intrigue her; an acute environmental awareness is another gift of her years at sea. She'll keep sailing, and plans to augment her “150-ton near-coastal master” and “500-ton ocean mate” licenses with her “500-ton ocean master's” license (requiring four years of 365 documented days under way). But, as she puts it, “I want to sail less intensely. There's not that much opportunity to be a schooner captain these days, and I'd like to think about having more ‘roots' ashore. Spending ten out of twelve months at sea makes it tough to have a personal life.”

The fact that in this predominantly male environment, Stone is one of the few female schooner captains in the world, says a great deal about her determination-and her passion. She smiles and shrugs her shoulders. “There are frustrations about working in this environment, but to my way of thinking, the only way this industry is going to become more woman-friendly is if there are women in leadership roles helping to change it,” she says. “The biggest lesson for me so far is that with a liberal arts education, you can do anything.”

High Drama on the High Seas

In 1995, I was a deckhand on the sailing vessel Ocean Star. We had the misfortune to be heading for Bermuda at the same time as Hurricane Marilyn, and spent approximately thirty hours hove-to offshore in the hurricane before we could get to St. George's. It blew and rained so hard that even hunched with my back to the wind in protective rain gear, I thought I would have bruises from the force of the rain.

At one point, our rescue boat was working itself free from its multiple lashings, and several crew members went forward to secure it again. We were harnessed into the boat, but I found myself underwater on deck, hanging on to some rigging after a boarding sea [wave] swept me off my feet. Luckily, I managed to stay with the boat; they never could have gotten me back in those conditions. A ninety-foot schooner is a very small planet on a day like that…you may find yourself wishing for another boring day at the office!

SPLURGE YR LIFE BY DOING SOMETHING YOU LOVE. My husband Paul is a musician. He says that the concept of talent is overrated because ‘talent’ is really the gift of love. ‘Talent’ happens when yr in love with something and you devote yr life to it and its yr love of it that makes you want to keep doing it, its yr love of it which helps you overcome the obstacles along the way, and its yr love of it that begets a talent for it.
—
Suzan-Lori Parks ’85, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, commencement address, 2001