After 30 years at sea, Elliot Rappaport is still obsessed with weather. (Courtesy photo)
Two expedition sailors who have been to the Arctic on the schooner Bowdoin, taught classes under the flag of the Maine Maritime Academy, and navigated ships all over the world, will share their tales of maritime exploration at Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta on Tuesday, Feb 11.
Captains Elliot Rappaport and Rick Miller will appear for a fundraiser benefitting both Lincoln Theater and The Carpenter’s Boat Shop. The event will mark one of the rare occasions when both captains have slowed down enough to spend some time together.
“We’re close friends, but we haven’t had a ton of overlap,” said Rappaport. “We’ve known each other for a long time, but we always seem to have been going in opposite directions.”
Indeed, even as Rappaport and Miller have long worked with Sea Education Association ships on wide-ranging expeditions.
“Rick would be joining or leaving and I would be headed in the opposite direction,” Rappaport said.
The captains share the appeal of open ocean passage making which has ranged from the Arctic to the South Pacific. Their mutual fascination with the atmospheric processes that create winds and weather have been influential in their careers as sailors and as educators.
Miller, who recently returned from a voyage between Fiji and New Zealand, will recount the challenges of tropical weather. Rappaport, in turn, will focus on the kind of nontropical weather that is typical of New England.
Just as weather changes from one part of the world to another, so will the captains’ presentation offer open-ended audience engagement to touch on a variety of topics.
Miller recently retired as a professor and dean of faculty at Maine Maritime Academy where his classes of instruction included terrestrial navigation, celestial navigation, seamanship, electronic navigation, meteorology, and marine weather routing.
Rick Miller climbs aloft on the barque Elissa. (Courtesy photo)
He has successfully blended his academic training as an educator with his passion for sailing for more than 40 years, sailing on a number of sail training vessels and many years with the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School.
Miller continues to be active as a mariner, sailing annually with Sea Education Association as a master of vessels transiting Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Since his retirement from the academy, he now sails with Sea Education Association and he is a Carpenter’s Boat Shop board member.
Rappaport has served as a captain in the U.S. maritime industry since 1992, primarily involved in the training of other mariners aboard a variety of traditional sailing ships. Currently a faculty member at Maine Maritime Academy, he also worked extensively with Sea Education Association.
His 30-year career at sea has included shipping internationally aboard sail training, and oceanographic research vessels. At Maine Maritime, his teaching assignments include meteorology, small craft construction, casualty analysis, and watchkeeping.
Miller and Rappaport will take the Lincoln Theater stage at 6 p.m. Admission is $20 in advance or at the door. For more information, email director@carpentersboatshop.org or call 677-2614.
