‘Docking should not cause a divorce’

Learning to drive boats with Camden captains Hannah Scott and Molly Eddy

Mon, 08/07/2017 - 11:00am

 CAMDEN — Maybe you have heard this couple (any harbor, U.S.A.), coming in to dock their boat. The man is generally at the helm; he’s nervous but doesn’t want to let on. She is on the bow, line in hand, and things are moving just a little too fast for a clean landing. Tension mounts, the skipper is barking, and others nearby on the float jump over to help fend off. It’s a fleeting scene, but what’s left behind are bruised feelings and crew members who wonder why they are on the boat at all.

But flip the sequence: The wife is at the helm, cutting the engine and easing the boat to nestle against the dock. On the bow, the husband is grinning as he hops off to cleat the line. He’s looking forward to a beer.

It’s an easy dockage. Why? Because both the crew and skipper are equally trained in boat fundamentals.

“Docking should not cause a divorce,” said Molly Eddy, who, along with her business partner, Hannah Scott, are changing it up. They have established a new business, Saltwater Maritime, to help boaters — novices and experts — sharpen their skills, and ultimately help them feel comfortable on their own vessels, be dinghy or 100-foot yacht.

Though the culture has changed and more women do take the helm, and that includes lobster boats to ships, it remains ingrained that men primarily operate large equipment, whether that be the trailer, snow plow, backhoe or large boat.

“There’s a real need to help people gain confidence to go out on the water and enjoy it,” said Eddy. “We realized that there are so many people who go sailing and there is always one person who doesn’t know as much. It leads to screaming and yelling.”

Both Eddy and Scott enjoy training boaters and helping them build a fundamental relationship to the vessel, water and weather. And even though they have a Rhodes 19 sailboat tied up at the Camden dock for lessons, Scott and Eddy will work with boat owners aboard their specific vessel. They are just as happy to go to any other harbor in the region and practice trimming sails, docking or making moorings with clients who have their own boats.

“As we orient to your boat, we will orient you to your boat,” said Eddy.

Both Scott and Eddy have been around boats for decades, and the two don’t slouch around. If they are not varnishing mahogany doors, tending to their respective children or helping out their husbands at their particular ventures, it’s likely they are out in the boat — some boat, and it doesn’t matter whose or how big. They are Maine mariners, born and bred on the salt water of Penobscot Bay, each with captains’ licenses poking from their wallets.

At age 17, Scott took to the ocean, working on the Olad, and then yachts. She is a 1995 Camden-Rockport High School graduate, who said she was just “bitten by the bug.”

“I just kept sailing,” she said. “I took a turn on yachts, and got a 50-ton captain’s license at 23.”

She skippered the 1924-built Bagheera, a schooner that was constructed in East Boothbay, and now sails out of Portland. She captained a vessel in the mid-Atlantic for a 90-year-old owner, had two children, and established and ran Bay Sailing Yacht Charters, in Rockland.

That’s how she came to know Molly, who is younger by 13 years, and whom Scott hired to be her handyman and sailing instructor at Bay Sailing.

Molly Eddy then went on to cultivate her own maritime career. She graduated Camden Hills Regional High School in 2004, sailed the waters around Puerto Rico and the Caribbean aboard the Spirit of Massachusetts, sailed with Bonnie and Earl McKenzie on the Bonnie Lynn, attended Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, taught seamanship to college students, crossed oceans on yachts, and worked on the ferries of Penobscot Bay — the Margaret Chase Smith, Capt. Frank Thompson, Gov. Curtis and Capt. Charles Philbrook.

She worked her way up from her 100-ton ocean master’s license, to a 500-ton mate’s ticket, and currently holds 1,600-ton ocean master’s license.

But you won’t find her wanting to ship out. And she doesn’t want to be a captain for hire.

Both Eddy and Scott want to be around their children as they grow up, and they don’t want to shelve their affinity to the maritime trade.

Last summer, while working a varnishing job together in South Thomaston, they got the idea of starting Saltwater Maritime. To Eddy, it’s about offering sailors the opportunity to practice driving boats, safely and confidently. It’s not just maneuvering; there’s making proper radio calls for help, and man-overboard drills. There’s sail trimming, spinnaker hoisting. And there’s reading the weather.

And the business is geared toward locals and summer residents, young and old.

“Sail and wail,” said Eddy.

“Learn, laugh and bitch,” said Scott.

Why do they each like being on the water so much?

To Eddy, it’s the simplicity of focusing on wind and water, without the complications of life on land.

To Scott, it is the freedom of pointing a vessel on a course, and working with the elements.

“You have to be so aware of your surrounding,” she said.

That’s the love of the water that they want to help others cultivate.

“We have a lot of fun working together, and neither of us wanted to take on a business of our own,” said Eddy.

But, they aren’t inclined to sit still, either.

“We need to make a space for ourselves,” said Eddy.

For more information, visit Saltwater Maritime’s Facebook page.

 

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At work with Molly Eddy