Round Pond native Kaitlin Hanna stands in the yard of her South Bristol home on Friday, Oct. 25. Hanna is a fifth-generation boat captain and carpenter. She is also the former head teacher at the British School in Zanzibar. (Johnathan Riley photo)
Kaitlin Hanna, of South Bristol, has held a variety of titles ranging in profession and location around the world.
During her travels to teach English in Tanzania, volunteer as a carpenter in Louisiana, and earn her captain’s license in New Harbor, Hanna learned that while place can be important in identity formation, it doesn’t have to be the defining factor.
“I’m always myself, no matter where I go, so I need to make the most of where I am, is my philosophy,” Hanna said.
Hanna spent her early formative years in Round Pond, which she said she appreciates now maybe more than she did then.
“I lived in Round Pond my whole (childhood) and my parents still live there,” she said. “I loved growing up in the woods, I don’t think I always appreciated it at the time, but in retrospect, I loved (it).”
Hanna’s parents are Chad and Mary Hanna. Chad Hanna is the chair of the Bristol Select Board and Mary Hanna previously taught at Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta.
Attending Bristol Consolidated School, Hanna had the same group of kids around her for nine years, from kindergarten through eighth grade, which she said presented both opportunities and challenges.
“There are so many gifts to that because you do learn to get along with people that you wouldn’t normally seek out, but also as a small group of people you can get sick of each other,” Hanna said, laughing.
Hanna attended Lincoln Academy in Newcastle where she said she enjoyed the change of scenery. During her time at the school, Hanna was an Advance Placement student, sang in the audition choir, Lincolnaires, and was involved in theatre.
After graduating high school in 2008, Hanna made the decision not to attend college right away because she wasn’t sure what she wanted to go to school for.
“I applied to a bunch of colleges and was definitely very much on the college track, but it was in the middle of the recession … and I didn’t really know what I wanted to go to college for,” she said.
Hanna said she didn’t travel extensively growing up but she discerned there was a world beyond coastal Maine that she wanted to interact with, so when considering what to do post-high school, she felt drawn to travel.
“In adolescence I really wanted to get my hands in it all and do whatever came my way and try it all,” Hanna said. “I wasn’t afraid to say yes if an opportunity comes my way.”
For the next three years, Hanna oscillated between summer work with Hardy Boat Cruises in New Harbor as a deck hand and winters as a carpenter in New Orleans, La.
Hanna previously visited New Orleans during her senior year of high school with friends to for a nonprofit, Lowernine, which was run by a friend’s father. While there, Hanna built houses with the nonprofit, with a mission of aiding long-term recovery efforts of the Lower Ninth Ward of the city after Hurricane Katrina breached the Industrial Canal levee in 2005.
In 2009 Hanna spent the first part of the fall and winter working on farms in Washington and Oregon through Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, which she said was sometimes an isolating experience, but one with important lessons.
“That was really interesting and really lovely, because I was by myself, 19, in a place with no transportation anywhere. It was a lesson in the value of community and friendships … and maybe more than anything that ‘place’ is really important, but places also don’t define you: you can define where you are,” Hanna said.
After coming back to Maine in 2011 and looking for a new adventure, Hanna reconnected with a friend of hers from Jefferson who offered her a position at a school in the East African country of Tanzania.
Within a month of the conversation with her friend, Hanna was on a flight to a nation known for its expansive wilderness and Serengeti National Park to teach the equivalent of third grade.
Hanna taught at the British School of Zanzibar for a year and returned to the states where she did odd jobs while completing her certificate to teach English as a second language.
Hanna returned to Tanzania to teach at the same school but this time as the fifth, sixth, and seventh grade English teacher. She then became the head teacher, the equivalent of the school’s principal, a role she remained in for another year before returning to Maine to pursue getting her captaining license.
“I was going to stay another year but I had enough sea time to get my captaining license … and I knew I wanted to come back home and just be close to family again,” she said.
After returning from Africa, Hanna started as a captain of the Hardy Boat in the spring of 2016.
“It was really exciting,” she said. “It was really fun to learn how to run the boat … but to actually take it on was scary because it was a lot of responsibility.”
While being a boat captain was a dream a long time in the making for Hanna, there were also challenges being a woman in a male dominated industry captaining a 60-foot vessel.
“It was really hard because I was a 26-year-old woman and people struggled to take me seriously,” she said. “Even though I took my job seriously they didn’t, which I was sort of used to as a deckhand but then it took a whole new level once I became captain.”
Hanna said her time on the Hardy Boat deepened her connections to the communities of Monhegan Island and New Harbor and those connections are ones she holds dear.
When Hanna earned her 100-ton captain’s license, it inspired her father, a longtime lobsterman, to do the same. Chad and Kaitlin Hanna became the fourth and fifth generation of boat captains in their family, both working on the Hardy Boat.
Hanna said her family history goes back at least eight generations in Lincoln County and contain a variety of maritime professions, including lighthouse keepers out on Franklin Island in Muscongus Bay and Pemaquid Point Lighthouse in Bristol.
During the beginning of the Hardy Boat season in the spring of 2017, Hanna gave birth to her first child, Lamia, with her then-husband. During the first year, Hanna watched over her friend’s kids as well as Lamia so she could be spend more time with her daughter. Hanna’s father, Chad, took over her duties as captain during that summer.
For the next few years, Hanna captained the Hardy Boat during the summer and worked carpentry during the winter at Lind Building and Renovation in Newcastle.
In 2020, Hanna made the decision to attend the University of Southern Maine to earn her degree in the social and behavioral sciences program to become an occupational therapist. The job’s medically adjacent nature and one-on-one approach are characteristics Hanna said she finds appealing. This fall, she began her work on a master’s in occupational therapy.
“I honed in on occupational therapy because it was something my mom had encouraged me to do … and I started researching it and it does tick a lot of boxes for me,” she said.
In December, Hanna gave birth to her second child, Zadie, with her longtime friend turned partner, Ben Meader.
The couple currently lives in South Bristol with Lamia, Zadie, and an affectionate orange cat named Emmet. Hanna said she’s lucky to have such wonderful family and friends in the area.
“My group of friends, my family, Ben’s family, have really helped me through the challenges of being a parent, a new student, and take the edges off of the hard things about living in Maine like the long winters I don’t love,” she said. “Every time I think about moving somewhere else, I think how I could I bring all these people with me.”
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