The lyrics of Steely Dan’s, “My Old School” say, “and I’m never going back to my old school.” Well, my name is Dan too, but unlike the Steely one, I did go back to my old school in a manner of speaking.
This morning, after the fog lifeted (see prior post), we sailed from Camden to Holbrook Island that we wanted to hike. This Island turns out to be a few miles away from Castine, home of the Maine Maritime Academy.
Maine Maritime Academy is the country’s preeminent university for marine transportation, marine engineering, marine biology, and similar. Many of its graduates become merchant marine officers.
I did not attend the Academy, but one of its faculty members, Eric Jergenson, associate professor of marine transportation, certified me as a US Sailing instructor in 2022.
With the Academy just across the bay, I thought I’d look Eric up. In a crazy coincidence, it turns out he was leading a class aboard one of the Academy’s training schooners, the “Bowdoin”, anchored just a few hundred yards away from Fregata! We dinghied over and had a nice chat, reminiscing about the certification class back when. He lives in Stockton Springs, ME and his family runs the Club Marina Restaurant that we will definitely check out in the future.
Betsy was right (re. “Sailing Through the ‘Hood”)… Maine is just a big small town!
