EAST BAY — It is, she admits, “the job of a lifetime.”
Tiverton native Liz Fisher has spent much of her time over the past four years at sea, teaching high school and college students aboard sail training vessels, mostly traditional wooden schooners.
For the past couple of years she has taught maritime studies at the Sea Education Association (SEA) in Woods Hole. That job has taken her aboard ships out onto the Atlantic and south to the Caribbean.
“And I recently completed my first transpacific voyage from Hawaii to San Francisco — no port stops, just the summer aboard the ship in the huge Pacific.”
Students in the SEA program spend six weeks studying at Woods hole and then six weeks at sea aboard one of the school’s two vessels. The 134-foot steel brigantine Corwith Cramer, named after SEA’s founder and built in 1987 as a research vessel for SEA in Bilbao, Spain, sails in the Atlantic, while the SSV Robert C. Seamans (topsail schooner/brigantine rigged) sails the Pacific.
Ms. Fisher set sail again on Oct. 15. This time, she and students are bound for Venezuela then north to Dominica and St. Croix.
“It is the job of a lifetime,” Ms. Fisher said, “although because you end up essentially living with the students at sea so much of the year, it truly does became an entire lifestyle beyond a job.”
Before heading to sea, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Rhode Island, a Ph.D. from Clark University, and also studied at Mystic Seaport.
URI wins offshore regatta
The University of Rhode Island team won its class and the overall title at the recent 2009 Storm Trysail Club Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta. The URI sailors raced with Rich du Moulin on his Express 37 Lora Ann.
Forty college teams participated in the regatta in five separate classes.
RWU sailors now second in nation
Good news for the up-and-coming Roger Williams University sailing team on lots of fronts lately.
The latest Sailing World collegiate co-ed dinghy rankings have the Hawks second in the nation behind only Yale University. Georgetown University is third, Boston College fourth and Brown University is fifth. Nearby teams also getting votes were URI and Connecticut College.
Yale is also ranked first in the women’s rankings with Brown third, Connecticut College 12th and URI 14th.
In other RWU sailing news:
• Two Roger Williams University sailors have qualified to compete in the Nov. 6-8 Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association/ LaserPerformance Men’s and Women’s Singlehanded Nationals. Racing will be from the Corpus Christi, Texas, Yacht Club. Among four men named from the New England area are Cy Thompson and Luke Lawrence, both of RWU. Brown University is sending one man, Fred Strammer, and one woman, Elizabeth Barry.
• Named to the 2009 Intercollegiate Sailing Association All Academic Sailing Team — First Team, was Maria Petrillo of Mystic, Conn. The Roger Williams University senior history major has a 3.79 grade point average.
URI keelboat off to France
The only United States university ever to win the Collegiate Keelboat World Cup in sailing, the University of Rhode Island sailing team, is in France in search of a second world title.
The most successful collegiate keelboat program in the country, URI is representing the country at the world championships for the 11th time since 1988. The Collegiate World Cup is held annually at locations either along the French Mediterranean or the French Atlantic seaboard. This year, URI is among 15 international teams in Marseilles for racing from Oct. 24-31.
The Rams won the event in 1990. This year’s team qualified for the World Cup by besting the field at the 2008 Kennedy Cup, hosted by the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. last November. Among those on the URI team is Lauren Gineo of Newport.
The team was able to borrow and practice in Newport on a Farr 30 vessel from Connecticut-based sailor Nelson Stevenson. The Farr 30 is the closest American vessel to the Grand Surprise boats used in France for the World Cup.
Rebirth of Freedom
Earl McMillen of Portsmouth’s McMillen Yachts will describe the four-year restoration of the 104-foot motoryacht Freedom during an Oct. 27 talk at the International Yacht Restoration School. Designed by John Trumpy and built by the Mathis Yacht Building Company (New Jersey), the 83-year-old yacht was restored here and launched earlier this year.
Also upcoming at IYRS (Nov. 10) Halsey Herreshoff, grandson of the renowned yacht designer and builder Nathanael Herreshoff, brings the magnificent steel schooners designed by his grandfather to life in his lecture on “The Great Herreshoff Schooners.”
All lectures will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the IYRS Restoration Hall (449 Thames St., Newport). Lectures are free for members of IYRS and the Museum of Yachting, and $7 for non-members..
For more information, visit www.iyrs.org or call 848-5777, ext. 222. To make a reservation at Café Zelda, call 849-4002.
