South Bristol School Principal Laurie Stiles speaks as the schools graduating class waits to enter the water during the annual boat launch in South Bristol on Wednesday, June 10. (Bisi Cameron Yee photo)
After a year of sawing and sanding and planing and painting, nine South Bristol School students found their seats in the two flat-bottomed skiffs they spent the last year building. Then the Heated Rowah and the S.S. Bobber slipped gently into the waters of the South Bristol Gut to the cheers of the assembled crowd.
“Boats have a unique ability to connect us to something larger than ourselves, adventure, discovery, nature, and freedom,” Principal Laurie Stiles said at the Wednesday, June 10 event. “Whether these vessels are used for recreation, work, or exploration, they symbolize possibility and potential, much like the students who built them.”
Maine Maritime Museum boatbuilding educator Dan Shea introduced those students: Rose Eraklis, Elsa Laughlin-Volk, Amelia Martunas, Aiyana Plummer, Avery Fossettt, Brailee Longe, Skyler Michaud, Charlotte Ramsdell, and Aerylyn Thompson.
He expressed his own gratitude for the opportunity to work with them.
“I want to pass along one thing I think I’ve learned and that is trust our youth,” he said.
This year marks the 30th launch in the school’s history. The program got its start in 1995 when former Principal Pam Sperry envisioned a way to combine the community’s maritime legacy with experiential learning through the boatbuilding process. Since then, the school’s eighth grade students spend every Friday of the school year at the boatbuilding workshop at the Maine Maritime museum constructing two 12-foot Yankee tender skiffs.
Students start off with smaller projects, such as a toolbox, a stool, and a half-model. They learn how to apply the math and science skills learned in school to the project at hand. And they learn new skills, too – not just woodworking and craftsmanship, but responsibility, collaboration, effective communication, and teamwork.
For Ramsdell, the boatbuilding program and its culminating launch led to the students bonding as a class.
“It was a fun group experience,” she said.
Since its early days, the program has been supported in large part by the Damariscotta-based Burns Family Foundation. In addition, the boats are sold to the public with one raffled off by the school and the second sold by the Maine Maritime Museum to help fund the program.
Sarah Spinney was a graduate of the program and returned to watch the next generation, including her niece, Longe, launch their boats. She described the experience was “very nostalgic.”
“It brings back all the memories and hard work. And obviously I cried,” she said. “Being able to share (the experience) with everyone was very cool, very emotional.”
Allen Spinney said the students had been practicing rowing “for many weekends in a row.”
“The boatmaking process has definitely brought something out in her,” Jenna Thompson said about her daughter Aerylyn, who offered “Words of Safe Journey” as Michaud and Longe christened the vessels with beribboned bottles of nonalcoholic bubbly.
“Please guide us as we navigate unfamiliar waters. Protect us from unseen dangers. And above all, be our anchor in the storm,” Aerylyn Thompson said.
