Our work on Bowdoin will be coming to an end over the next seven weeks so that the vessel will be ready to sail for our annual training cruises. This year, we will have two CR-313 training cruises that take rising seniors on 14-day offshore voyages to Nova Scotia. These training cruises act as a concentrated capstone course for students in the Vessel Operations and Technology major.  During each trip, students cover topics such as celestial navigation, passage planning, weather routing, bridge resource management, vessel systems operations, and electronic navigation. Students will also each spend a day serving as the vessel’s galley assistant to see what it takes to feed a crew of 16!

But, there is still plenty of work to do before we go sailing. This week we finalized all the futtock replacements, put four new planks on the vessel – including the garboard plank on the port side – and finalized plans to put six new “keel bolts” in the vessel.

These “keel bolts” will go from the top of the keelson and connect to the bottom of the keel where there is a steel shoe.  The steel shoe is a feature unique to Bowdoin and was designed to protect the vessel from groundings and ice.  The 1-1/8” diameter steel rods used for the bolts will be welded to the 7/8” thick steel shoe and to a steel plate on top of the keelson.  These extra fastenings will provide increased strength to the vessel and will ensure that the keel remains secured to the vessel. In order to reach the steel shoe, several keel bolts will require us to drill through around five feet of wood.

I hope that all the students at MMA are having a good last week of classes and wish them the best of luck on finals next week!

All the best,

Captain McLean

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