On Vinalhaven, the idea was to take a six-month cruise

CYRUS MOULTON

Mark Jackson is the director of the Vocational Technology Program at Vinalhaven School, and most often can be found in the shop he and his students built in 2003. But during the 2006–07 school year, his classroom was somewhere between Vinalhaven and St. Augustine, Florida, and the shingled barn has been replaced by a 30-foot steel-hulled sloop that his students refurbished. The sloop is named FREYA.

After three years of dreaming, building, planning and persuading anxious parents and school board members, the culminating stage of the Vocational Technology Program, VIVA, or Vinalhaven Island Viking Adventure, began as FREYA departed Vinalhaven on September 24, 2006, for a six-month cruise down and up the East Coast.

"VIVA," wrote Jackson in a March 2006 Working Waterfront article, "[is] a word used to shout enthusiastic approval. It means 'to live.'"

VIVA places up to four students at a time for a six-week period aboard FREYA as crew members. Students are responsible for the maintenance and operation of the boat; everything from cooking meals to navigating courses and piloting. The students are also responsible for maintaining their schoolwork. An interdisciplinary curriculum incorporates science, English, math and social sciences and enables students to continue class work while on board. At the same time they can make the most of their visits to unique natural and cultural sites, while documenting and sharing their experience with students back on Vinalhaven via the Internet.

The boat is outfitted with technology that transforms it into a veritable floating classroom. Audio equipment allows students to document their experience. Internet connectivity is provided via an air card and a cellular signal, and students maintain a ship's log on a laptop. The log is uploaded to the VIVA website.

Designed by Al Mason and built by Gilbert Klingle in the 1950s, the sloop is based on the "Intrepid" design that first appeared in a 1945 issue of The Rudder magazine, where it was described as "a fairly small boat that will be an able, comfortable ship, suitable for any normal cruising yet one which can make the big long cruise when the day really comes."

It took a while to get there, but the day has come for Jackson and his students.

Jackson began his tenure at the Vinalhaven School in 1998, and literally, he says, "built the program from the ground up." School administrators had wanted to emphasize marine trades because of the importance of the ocean to the island's culture, economy and identity. Lobstering is the basis of Vinalhaven's year-round economy.

By the end of Jackson's first year, although there were only two students enrolled, the program had already outgrown its space—twice. But a student presentation convinced the Region 8 board of directors that additional shop space was a worthwhile investment, and students spent the spring of 1999 constructing a 20-by-40-foot bow-roofed shed on a solid foundation.

The next year, the "feeder program" that Jackson had established to pique the interest of seventh- and eighth graders had such positive results that the program had to be rearranged to allow daily block scheduling, and class sizes were limited to a maximum of six. The program also built its first boat, a 32-foot Cornish pilot gig with six rowing stations, for the Vinalhaven Community Rowing Program.

This pilot gig introduced the community to the potential for broader positive impacts. The funding for the program was raised locally. Five members of an adult education class worked alongside the students, sometimes under the students' supervision. Grade-school classes, volunteers and curious onlookers pitched in. Most significantly, a second boat, Jackson believed, "would get more islanders out on the water."

The boatbuilding program eliminates the "age-old student lament of 'Why do I have to learn this stuff? I'll never use it,' " Jackson says. "It puts a real-life perspective on the project. And it makes use of some great boats."

And FREYA is the most recent great boat to come out of Vinalhaven. Jackson described the project's beginnings in The Working Waterfront in March 2006:

The project began during the 2002–03 school year when three students spent a semester brainstorming ideas for their ideal learning experience. They wanted to build a boat and sail around the world. During discussions of the many practical considerations surrounding such a feat, the idea morphed into rebuilding a small boat and attempting the modest cruise of the Eastern seaboard. Encouraged to make their ideas a reality, the students located a boat project that had stalled and convinced the project's originator that what he had begun could be completed in the Vinalhaven vocational education program.

Students began the long building process when the boat, in the form of a bare hull with plywood deck and mahogany cabin house, arrived at the Vinalhaven shop from Florida in January 2004. Students immediately went to work on repainting and patching the hull, removing the cabin house and deck in the process.

For the next two years, Jackson led students through a complete refurbishing of the boat, always keeping an eye on the guiding philosophy that he developed for the program: welding the importance of quality craftsmanship with responsibility, practicality and efficiency.

"Cruising a small boat—possible, yes; probable, maybe," writes Jackson.

With the right attitude, one can do most anything. It's the same with sailing a small cruising craft. One will most definitely have to be completely self-motivated, and able to leave what they own on land while they go on a voyage. Money is no real issue when constructing or buying a craft for voyage because a smaller craft is relatively inexpensive, as long as one sticks to the necessities and stays away from luxuries. A good positive attitude combined with hard work would be necessary to succeed in the venture. A reason someone might want to go cruising in a small craft would be to escape from the tribulations of land and do something they have always wanted to try.

Cruising is an art, and a challenge to see how little several people can live off of for extended periods of time. Each member of the crew has to pull his own weight, and should be skilled in areas such as cooking, carpentry, and medicine. Cruising can be done by anyone as long as they have the desire. Cruising is a way to get away from everyday life and simplify your standards of living.

It's important to always be aware of your surroundings and what needs to be done on board. The most important thing is to always be aware. Somebody might want to go sailing for adventure or to see the world. For somebody to have a successful trip, you need to be able to leave everything behind. Keep it simple and go.

Emphasizing the themes of "keeping it simple" inherent in cruising and the design of good boats, Jackson and his students made conscious decisions to adapt the 1945 plans to modern, more-efficient technology. In an effort to minimize their reliance on fossil fuel energy sources, they added a wind turbine, a photovoltaic panel and an alternator to produce electricity. The cabin contains a small woodstove for heat. LED, halogen and fluorescent lightbulbs replaced less-efficient incandescent lighting. The students improved the propulsion from the original design by including a fully battened mainsail. An AirHead Dry Toilet was installed, instead of a conventional holding tank.

But the advancements of modern technology did not replace traditional boatbuilding methods or craftsmanship. Students installed a full ceiling of cedar in the main cabin and oak in the forepeak. The interior furnishings—including bunks, navigation station, galley and engine box—were all designed by students, and constructed from student-produced mock-ups. Eight opening ports salvaged from a sister ship were installed in the main cabin to provide ventilation, and the interior is a combination of painted plywood and varnished wood.

Cyrus Moulton is Fellows Program Coordinator at the Island Institute.