Transcription of Sailing Maine #151
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show #151: “Sailing Maine.” Airing for the first time on Sunday, August 3, 2014. Summer is a great time to be on the water. Join our conversations with people who love navigating Maine waters by boat and have made it possible for others to do the same. Janet Acker and Jess McGreehan share their experience with Portland Sail Maine Organization and Matt Barton describes his rewarding transition from financial consultant to boat builder at the Hinckley Company by way of the Landing School. Thank you for joining us.
One of the things that I most enjoy doing myself is sailing and unfortunately,
I don’t get much of a chance to do it, but it’s something I learned as a camper and it’s something that’s stayed with me my whole life. The people who are here today, I’m very pleased that they get to enjoy this on a regular basis. We have Janet Acker. Janet has sailed her whole life and while living on the West Coast, she founded and developed a community-based sailing program known as “Sail Orcas.” Today she is the executive director of Sail Maine. On her time off she is an avid sailor with her husband. Thanks for coming in Janet.
Janet: Thank you very much.
Dr. Lisa: The other person we have with us is Jess McGreehan, who learned to sail at Sail Maine and later went on to race competitively in high school and college. She has worked as an adult instructor, junior program instructor and high school sailing coach at Sail Maine. This summer she will connect their sailing curriculum with environmental education. Thank you for coming in.
Jess: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Sailing, from what I can tell it’s a very interesting group of people who become so committed to something that … Well, it’s interesting. Boats, they take a lot of time, they take a lot of attention and yet people who love to sail, love to sail, are passionate about sailing. Why for each of you is this the case?
Janet: I started sailing very young as a family activity and I think many people start sailing within their family unit and so it becomes something that gives wonderful memories. Then as you grow up and you become an adult you carry that with you because sailing’s the kind of sport that isn’t something that you only do as a child or in high school or in college and then you put it away. It’s a lifelong sport. Anybody can sail, even people with handicaps can sail. I think that the other wonderful thing about sailing is that it can be coed. It could be competitive. It could be non-competitive. It could be a team sport. It could be an individual sport. There are so many different ways that you can enjoy sailing that it really opens up a lot to people in many, many different ways and many different age groups.
Dr. Lisa: What about you Jess?
Jess: Yeah, I think Janet touched upon a few things that I really feel passionate about with sailing and that is I really find that sailing offers a wide variety of experiences, from racing to just pleasure cruising to using it as a vehicle to explore new territory. Also, sailing is so full and rich of tradition dating back to original sailors and Polynesian navigation and investigation of new lands and new worlds, but also within family units. My family didn’t sail so I didn’t grow up sailing, but I feel really fortunate that I was brought into sailing via a non-traditional route, but kind of a new age and the tradition, which is community sailing and the idea that sailing can be for anyone. Your family doesn’t have to have a boat to be a sailor and to enjoy the water. There’s still ways to access the water.
Dr. Lisa: Community sailing is pretty fascinating because it does bring something that for some people might not have been accessible right into the community and
I think that’s what Sail Maine is trying to do.
Janet: Exactly. The whole purpose of Sail Main is to provide access to sailing and to the waters, specifically with Sail Maine of Casco Bay to people that don’t have other outlets for that. We make it affordable. We make it accessible to children and adults regardless of their ability to afford to have a boat or to sail. We try to bring as much diversity into the program as we can. We want to be sure that everyone who is a Portland resident knows that they can come and sale at Sail Maine regardless and we have lots of opportunities for that to happen.
Dr. Lisa: Sail Maine is located just right down the street from us.
Janet: Right down the street. It’s right down on the waterfront right next to the cruise ship terminal in Portland Yacht Services. We’re very open. It’s a small little spot, but we’re very open and we love to have people come through and see what we’re doing. I’m sure many people in the Portland area have seen the little sailboats down there in the summertime and the fall and the spring and wondered, “What’s going on down there?” But that’s Sail Maine.
We offer high school racing programs for the six area high schools in the greater Portland area. In the fall and the spring, each of those programs as nearly 100 students racing. Then we offer junior sailing during the summer months for kids from the age of five all the way through seventeen. Then we offer adult programming for adult lessons, “Learn to Sail,” “Learn to Race.” We also have new to us last year a fleet of J-22 keel boats that we rent to qualified adults to either race or just to go out and have a wonderful day sailing on a weekend or an evening and those are available to anyone can get certified best to have the skills to use these boats. We welcome everyone to come down and sail with us.
Dr. Lisa: When people are out walking around the trail at the bottom of the Eastern prom and they look over and they see the sailboats and the big sign that says “Sail Maine” that’s you.
Janet: That’s us.
Dr. Lisa: When were you founded? How long have you been in existence?
Janet: Sail Maine was founded in 1996, but it was sort of a smaller program, an adjunct, a little bit of the University of Southern Maine and it kind of stayed that way for a number of years, but within the last eight years is when it’s really exploded into a very, cohesive large program. We now have over a hundred boats and over the course of the year we’ll serve in one form or another, close to a thousand people.
Dr. Lisa: What was the impetus eight years ago or even as far back as 1996 to create this program? Who decided that this was an important thing that needed to be here in Portland?
Janet: There were a number of people in this area that felt strongly that Portland needed to have a community sailing program. There are a number of the yacht club programs around, but there wasn’t something that was open to everyone regardless of membership. A couple of those people that were involved in this, the genesis of this idea were Chris Robinson, Phineas Sprague and Wynn Fowler. Those three gentlemen came together in one form or another, planted the seed that has grown into Sail Maine.
Dr. Lisa: Phineas Sprague is the one who’s also responsible for the little railroad that runs down the bottom of the Eastern prom. Where did you grow up, Jess?
Jess: I grew up in South Portland so just across the bridge. I went to South Portland High School. There was a little bit of time where we were actually in Central Maine, which was probably the worst part of the family history and so everyone would say because we were so sad to be away from the ocean, but then we moved back to South Portland. As a freshman in high school, I was looking for something new to do and I saw a flyer somewhere and it said, “Learn How to Sail,” and back then it was a bit of a different program. We had only a few boats, maybe six boats at the time and it was a whole bunch of different high school students so Wayne Fleet, Yarmouth, Falmouth, Greeley, South Portland, Portland and I think there were about 12 of us total and we met at Sail Maine and we had a coach and learned to sail and learned to race.
Dr. Lisa: Your family wasn’t really a sailing family prior to that point?
Jess: Nope, nope. Yep, they don’t really enjoy sailing as much as I do, but they will humor me and allow me to take them out on the water, but they don’t really enjoy the thrills of “healing over,” which is when the boat tips to one side or tips to another. I’ve never made them cap size, of course, which is when the boat goes fully over, but I definitely enjoy … I enjoy the speed and the feeling of the boat connecting with the wind and the water and going fast. Well, it’s not their cup of tea.
Dr. Lisa: What was that like to be in a family of non-sailors? Janet, you came from a family of sailors so your experience was very different than yours, Jess?
Jess: Yeah. Back in the day my dad actually used to sail quite a bit and then he went away from the water and hasn’t really been back to the water, but I remember growing up hearing sailing stories. Going to bed he would tell us stories of when he was out on the water sailing and so I think actually the seed was planted a long, long time ago. I was always curious about the ocean and then when I got the opportunity to go sailing, for me it just feels like it all connects. It’s all there and there’s nothing like the feeling of being on the boat with the wind blowing through your hair and the water spraying up and the sun coming down or even rain. Rain’s fine and sometimes snow, you got to have that open attitude if you’re from Maine.
I would say that just because my family didn’t sail didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to be able to experience that and have my own time on the water. They were very supportive of me and they wanted to make sure I wore a life jacket and things like that, but otherwise, yeah, there was a lack of support from them.
It just turned into be something that “Jess did in the family.”
Dr. Lisa: I know when I was at Yarmouth there wasn’t anything to do with sailing or boats at the high school itself, which is sad because I probably would have liked to gravitate towards that. What’s really nice is that it has become very popular. Now we do have people who sail and we do have people who row crew and things like that. I think it just broadens the opportunity for people who, they want to be active, they want to be outdoors, but they don’t necessarily want to be playing soccer and they don’t necessarily want to be running. It just allows people to do something that just resonates more with them at a younger age.
Jess: Definitely. What Janet and I were saying earlier, there are a whole bunch of different ways to experience sailing. Whether you go the competitive route or you go the route of pleasure cruising or just using the vessel as a way of experiencing being on the water, that’s an option with sailing and that’s an option for our high school students and also, for our junior program, the younger sailors because not everyone is into the competitive aspect of racing. Just like if there’s a soccer team there could be a competitive side and then there could be a club team where people get together and just have fun.
Dr. Lisa: What have you noticed from people who have come up through the program Janet? How has it changed the way that they approach the world?
Janet: Sailing is such a great lesson for life skills. Kids come through a sailing program having tremendous self-confidence and self-reliance and the ability to troubleshoot and to manage chaos. A lot of sailing can be, not always, but chaos because the wind will shift or another boat will come very close to you or something like that and you have to figure out how to get yourself out of that situation.
I think kids learn very quickly how to manage stress, how to be self-reliant, how to think ahead because when they’re learning how to sail to a point and go around that point and they have to anticipate and look at three steps ahead of where they are now and it’s really truly a remarkable thing to see kids grow.
My favorite day of instructing kids is when you put a little seven-year-old, eight-year-old child in a little boat by themselves the first day and at the end of the first day they are sailing. It’s just incredible to go from zero to sixty in one day with these kids and the parents are blown away. The kids, they don’t know any better, so they’re just running around thinking it’s great. It’s just such an incredible thing to watch. That leap of experience falls so quickly and kids take to it very, very quickly. I would say 90% of kids take to it very quickly when they’re that young. I suppose like skiing.
The kids that go through our program tend to stay with us. They come back year after year after year. Then as they get into that age group they can then come back and have summer jobs with us, which is really wonderful. They come and learn how to be assistant instructors and then they come back and they’re full instructors and then they may go on to college and sail or they may just continue to sail recreationally. I think a lot of our students come through and they really buy-in to the whole thing and it stays with them for a very long time.
Dr. Lisa: Here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shephard of Shephard Financial.
Tom: Sometimes I meet with married or partnered clients and when we get to talking about their financial lives, a cultural divide bubbles to the surface. One person feels one way about their money and the other seems to be on their own financial island with a set of beliefs and rules that have created unnecessary borders and boundaries. It’s not an uncommon thing. When I hit those situations I do my best to help both people understand that neither is 100% right or wrong. That they simply have to take a step back and look at their own financial life in a new light.
It is also true in politics and economics what we need to do is see money as a living thing that can be used to grow our lives together without disagreement or so-called “border issues.” It’s a great feeling for me. It’s like I’m helping people negotiate peace treaties with their money. Be in touch if you want to know more, Tom@ShephardfinancialMaine. We’ll help you evolve with your money.
Announcer: Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRAW SIPC. Investment advice offered through Flagship Harbor Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Flagship Harbor Advisors and Shephard Financial are separate entities from LPL Financial.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is brought to you by Bangor Savings Bank. For over 150 years Bangor Savings has believed in the innate ability of the people of Maine to achieve their goals and dreams. Whether it’s personal finance, business banking or wealth management assistance you’re looking for, at Bangor Savings Bank you matter more. For more information visit www.Bangor.com.
Dr. Lisa: What about the teamwork and the teambuilding aspect to sailing? Is that something that you see as being a benefit to the people who are coming through.
Jess: Definitely. I know from my personal experience learning to sail and working at Sail Maine, teamwork has been a major lesson that I have learned. Through teamwork I have learned skills like competency because you have to be able to … My sailing coach used to say, “You have to have the skills to pay the bills.” So he would say, “Let’s learn how to do this skill really solidly,” and the whole team would work together, even though we were on separate boats, but we would work together to strengthen our individual skills, which then in turn strengthened the entire team.
I learned a lot about effective communication and how to not only communicate in a non-verbal way with someone that I was in a boat with just using body language to move the boat together in an efficient way, but also how to communicate with my team on the water and off the water, too. Definitely, learned a lot about what Janet was stating with judgment and decision-making. There’s times when as a sailor you have to be really decisive and directive and you don’t have time to consult anybody because the boat will tip over. Then there are other times where you say, “Well, maybe there’s some strategy that needs to go into this? What do you think we should do?”
We all consult because there are many, many ways to sail a boat and that is the really cool thing is when you start putting a whole bunch of people together on a boat, a whole bunch of individuals to become that team, you come up with a much bigger, brighter, better picture of a way to do something and that’s what I find really inspiring about working with others on a boat.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve both had the opportunity to sail in places other than Maine. What is it about Maine that is different and special?
Janet: Well, I think the fact that there are more miles of Maine coastline I think than there are of California or anywhere else. It is truly one of the most spectacular places to cruise in the world. People come from all over the world to charter here. It’s not without its difficulties though. Maine water is not like the Pacific Northwest in Washington State where it’s beautiful also, but it’s deep everywhere you go. Maine has lots of ledges and rocks and things to avoid so people have to be really on their game navigationally here in Maine, which is part of the challenge and part of the fun. I think a lot of the sailors enjoying that aspect of sailing. It’s the book work that has to go with the sailing part of it.
The most amazing thing about the coast of Maine is that you can be in a cove by yourself pretty much every night on a cruise and you can’t say that about many other places in the country for cruising grounds so I think it’s just a remarkable place.
Jess: I would say for me just getting the exposure to sailing in Maine first was or is a seed that has been planted that I will always want to come back here. After going through college and getting some certifications through Sail Maine, I was fortunate enough to be able to sail on a few big boats down in the Caribbean, across the West Coast from Mexico to French Polynesia. I did a whole bunch of cruising with my last job in Baja Mexico in the Sea of Cortez and still, still I dream about sailing in Maine. I dream about coming back to Maine and being on the water here because of the things that Janet mentioned, but it’s just so beautiful and so pristine.
Maine is unique in that even if everybody started sailing here there would still be space to have your own little cove. There’d be a little nook or cranny at an island that you never knew existed until you looked at the chart and said, “Oh wow, that’s just a rock pile, but actually it’s a little island that we can go visit.” Yeah,
I just really appreciate how dynamic sailing in Maine is, not only with the weather and the water, but the tide and also, just the variations in the land formations along the rocky coast.
Dr. Lisa: It also sounds like you are able to re-connect people with something that is bigger than their iPhone, bigger than of the Internet. You’re reconnecting them with the water, the wind, the land masses, the islands. That seems pretty important.
Janet: Absolutely. I think one great thing about the junior programs is that kids get out there completely away from all of technology and they’re in a boat either with another sailor or by themselves or with a couple other sailors. There’s a lot of different variations of how their interaction with other people goes and they have to talk. You’re in a cockpit. You’re in a four foot square space and you have to talk with each other. I think we’ve lost a lot of that. One of the benefits of sailing is that it forces that interaction.
As adults, the same thing, we do social sailing on Friday nights during the summer. We invite people to come down and get on a boat with people they’ve never met before. What a great thing to do on a Friday night, go meet some new people and enjoy Casco Bay on those beautiful summer evenings and learn to sail. If you don’t know how, learn to sail and if you do know how, show someone else. I think it’s really a nice way for people to unplug and as Jess said, “There’s nothing like that feeling of being out there with just no motor, just wind, water, salt air, wildlife. There’s nothing like it.”
One other thing I want to say about sailing in this area. We do offer women’s only programs. I mention that because I think that this is probably a show that’s listened to by a lot of women out there. I, as a young woman sailing, I purchased my first boat by myself as a single woman and that was one of the most proud days of my life. I think that for a lot of women sailing is an outlet and an activity that they can do and that they can learn that they can take a lot of pride in the fact that you don’t need to have a male counterpart to sail or to take a boat out or to own a boat or to go sailing around the world. I encourage any women out there who would like to sail, don’t let the fact that it seems like a big physical sport stop you from coming and learning because it’s not. We do everything we can at Sail Maine to make it comfortable and easy to learn in a women’s only group.
Dr. Lisa: How do people find out about Sail Maine?
Jess: Well, there’s a few different ways. We have a website and you can visit that website. It’s SailMaine.org. Also, we have a Facebook page in which people can check us out there, where we’re updating that page, putting up pictures of what our volunteers are doing, what our youth groups are doing, what the adult sailors are doing.
Janet: We’re happy to put anybody on the mailing list and if you’re on our mailing list, then we send out information about volunteer opportunities, about events, about fun things that we’re doing down at Sail Maine. We always encourage people just to come on by, come knock on the door, walk in the office, ask us what we’re doing down there and we can provide lots of opportunities to get involved.
Jess: Yeah. I’d say a majority of the folks that I’ve introduced to Sail Maine have been just walking along the bike path, walk-path there and they’ve come down and said, “Hey, what’s this all about?” I’ve handed them a brochure and said, “I’m so glad you caught me right now. I’m about to go out on the water.” The other thing is if we aren’t there, it probably means that we’re sailing, but we want you to come back so please try us again.
Dr. Lisa: I encourage people who are listening, women or maybe high school students or younger students or families, anyone who’s interested in sailing to look at your website, go to your Facebook page, learn more about Sail Maine. We’ve been speaking with Janet Acker and Jess McGreehan of Sail Maine. Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us about sailing. I’m inspired.
Jess: Great.
Janet: To thank you for having us.
Jess: You’ll have to sail with us.
Janet: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy.
Marcy: When asked most of my clients say the same thing about what keeps them up at night: Monday. Making certain cash flow is there to meet day-to-day operational needs. “Oh my gosh, is payroll going to be able to make it?” When we dig deeper, we understand that those sleepless nights are symptoms of poor planning and forecasting. More often than not, the reasons for not doing it are a lack of time and a lack of resources so here’s a suggestion. Instead of living in fear of the numbers and losing sleep over them, make peace with them by paying closer attention to the financials and creating positive cash flow. I’m Marcy Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need. BoothMaine.com.
Announcer: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is brought to you by the following generous sponsors. Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage it’s your move. Learn more at Rheritage.com.
Dr. Lisa: One of the things that I enjoy learning about are new and innovative programs that bring people to the waters, the waterways of Maine and the Landing School is one of these innovative programs. Today we have with us Matt Barton. Matt is a former student at the Landing School in Arundel and now works as an engineer at the Hinckley Company. Thanks for coming in and talking to us today.
Matt: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: So Matt, let’s back up and get a little bit of information on you and how it is that you came to be at the Landing School. You’re from Cape Elizabeth originally?
Matt: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: You graduated from that school?
Matt: Cape Elizabeth High School.
Dr. Lisa: Then what direction did your life take?
Matt: In high school I never really to be honest thought of going to the Landing School or doing anything of that nature. I always grew up on the water around here and I always thought I wanted to work in the marine, the boat industry because I had a passion for that, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. I guess going through high school I always thought I was supposed to go away and get the four year degree in economics and that’s the path I took. I studied economics and when I came back I landed in Boston and worked at a financial company for two or three years before I realized that I wasn’t overly happy doing that and wanted to do something else. I actually happened upon a brochure for the design program at the Landing School and I decided that I should apply and that’s how I ended up there.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about the Landing School because I don’t think everybody is familiar with that?
Matt: The Landing School is a small school in Arundel, Maine. It has several different programs. It has a yacht design program, which is the program I attended and graduated from. It also has a marine systems program, a composites program, as well as a couple boat building programs. They’re all one year courses. I think you can now choose to do multiple years and actually get a Bachelors degree out of it is my understanding, but when I attended it was a one year program. That’s what intrigued me most about it was that I had already spent a lot of money and been to school for four years and couldn’t spend another four going back to get a degree in marine engineering.
This one year program really interested me. It’s a one-year or ten month intensive boat design program that encompasses everything from structural engineering to design and aesthetics and really opens a lot of doors and prepares its graduates to enter the marine industry. For me it opened the doors and I luckily enough landed a job at the Hinckley Company which is growing up in Maine was a company that I was always quite interested in and decided to work there now.
Dr. Lisa: When you were a student at Cape Elizabeth, did you do any water-related activities as sports or were you encouraged in any way to do things that had anything to do with boats or the water?
Matt: Not particularly. Cape High School has, I’m not sure if they still do, but they did at the time had as part of the carpentry department they had actually a boat building class where you could take for I think it was a full year, rather than just a semester. There were just a few students and then you could build a kayak or a canoe and I built a Rangely boat. I think it was my junior year. I learned a lot of boat building skills doing that, basic carpentry skills, but I always had this passion for the water. I grew up sailing in Casco Bay on boats with my family and just always spent a lot of time at the beach surfing or on the water in the summers, but in school that was I guess the one course that led to me in the direction of boat building.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think there is something that maybe, I don’t want to say is lacking, but in the educational system right now do you think there’s a hands-on aspect that people are craving?
Matt: I think so. I think there’s probably a lack of emphasis on the trades now in school. I think students almost frown upon the technical schools in my opinion. The technical schools and the trades opt more for whether you’re studying politics or economics or the arts or business, things of that sort. Whereas, for me, I went and studied economics, but I really came back to was the hands-on engineering and the technical side of things which I don’t think there were … Maybe I just didn’t steer in that direction, but I don’t think there was as many opportunities in that area for me growing up.
Dr. Lisa: As you’re doing design and the work that you’re doing now, you actually have to utilize lots of different parts of your brain?
Matt: Definitely.
Dr. Lisa: That’s very hands-on, but there’s a lot of math involved. There’s a lot of creativity.
Matt: I spend a lot of my day … I love the position I’m at work because I sit in this office that has a big window open to the shop floor and I spent a lot of my day on the shop floor and spend a lot of my day behind the desk working in computerated design programs, as well as sketching on paper and doing calculations with the calculator. There’s all aspects to it. There’s the engineering aspect and then there’s also the shop-floor aspect of it. Nothing’s more rewarding than being able to draw, design on your desk, issue a shop-floor drawing and then be responsible for that drawling on the floor, knowing that the carpenter, the mechanic that’s assembling that part is going to come knocking on your door if you made any mistakes. I found that very rewarding.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have a chance to see what happens once the things that you’ve helped build are born, where they go?
Matt: Absolutely. Again that’s one of the neat things about working at the production plant for Hinckley in Trenton, Maine, is we are where the designs come into the door and we do a lot of the production and engineering. We do it all in-house and then we see the boats literally be built outside that window in the shop in Trenton. We say, “They come in as a drum of resin and a pallet of lumber and they leave a million-dollar yacht.” We put that boats through their paces. If it’s a new design we go and we do extensive sea trials on the boats locally in the water at our service yard in Southwest Harbor. Then the boats come out and they’re final assembled for delivery to the owner.
Dr. Lisa: I’ve been to Hinckley and Southwest Harbor and I have talked to some of the people who have Hinckley boats I guess. I want to call them “vessels.” That sounds very grand, but it seems like such a happy group. People seem to really like their boats.
Matt: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Is that another one of the benefits of working in this industry?
Matt: I think so. You’re absolutely right about that. The owners of these boats are very proud to be Hinckley owners and they’re always happy with their boats.
I’d say 95% of the people come and visit the actual production facility while their boats in build. The pride on their face when they walk around the shop floor just grinning ear to ear just seeing their new boat taking place. There’s all levels involved. We have some owners that may visit once and check in and more or less just want the finished product. Then we want some owners that will come for a week at a time and literally pull up a chair on the shop floor and just watch their boat go together. Whatever the cases, the owners are very proud.
Just like the owners, I find it amazing how proud the crafts-people at Hinckley are. It’s a name that people are proud of and the employees of the company, their commitment to the boats is amazing and their skill. We have some 35 year veteran carpenters that have built Hinckley upon Hinckley and they treat each one like it’s their first and they’re really amazing both to see go together.
Dr. Lisa: If I was someone looking for a boat, what would be the benefit to me be of being involved in the process, working with Hinckley to create a boat that was uniquely mine or uniquely my families?
Matt: I find us to be a little bit of a unique company. Some people would consider us a full-on production boat builder. Others would consider us a semi-custom boat builder. I think we fall more in the semi-custom area because we have a number of designs. We don’t build a custom boat from scratch, typically. We have a number of designs that are “This is the boat that the an owner purchases.”
But what Hinckley offers is the ability for that person to come in and work with a project manager at the company and to come to the plant and basically test drive other boats and walk through other boats and see, “I want to customize this piece.”
Hinckley is known for its trademark teak and cherry carpentry work. People may come in and say, “That’s good, but I want to add teak here. I want to add a teak weather deck to my boat. I want to add cherry in this area of the boat,” and Hinckley offers that. We offer the ability for someone to come in and buy this very well-designed boat that is sort of a production boat, but to come in and customize that and that’s what really makes us what I believe to be a semi-custom boat builder.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think there’s something special about boats that come out of Maine?
Matt: I think so. Maine has a rich boat building history and Hinckley has always been rooted in Maine, started in Southwest Harbor. I think you’d have a hard time finding the talent crafts-people outside of Maine. Not just because some of these people had experience building many Hinckley’s, but because there’s a rich history of boat building in general in Maine and you have generations of boat builders that’s what’s in their blood. It’s in the family and I think that’s a unique thing about Maine and special about Hinckley.
Dr. Lisa: As far as the Landing School is concerned, how was it determined and maybe you can answer this, maybe you can’t, but how was it determined that there was a need? Who came along and said, “OK, it looks like there’s a gap. We want to bring out a new generation of individuals who can help in this trade with this very specific and very important craft.”
Matt: I can’t say I know the history of the Landing in School probably as much as I should after I attended there a year. I probably I spent more time studying boats than studying the school I guess. It certainly does meet a real need. I have to believe it was created to meet that need for those people and I think we need more schools like the Landing School to be honest.
Hinckley’s at a funny spot where we have a lot of these 35 year veteran carpenters and mechanics at the company and I don’t want to say we struggle to find new, young talent because there’s definitely some out there and we have a lot of it, but we try to recruit students out of the Landing School because they’re well-prepared for this industry. They have a passion for this industry. I think the state would be well-served to have another school like the Landing School.
I think there’s a definite need for it.
Dr. Lisa: When you were at the Landing School, where did the other students come from? What were their backgrounds and what caused them to decide to go in this direction?
Matt: Yeah. I think what caused everybody to go in that, what drives everybody in that direction is there a passion for boats and boat building and engineering and design. As far as where the people came from, it was a real variety. I’m just thinking in my program we had some international students. Some had owned an international business and were maybe in the position to spend a year at the Landing School. We had other students that were out of high school. This was their first bit of education beyond high school. We had other students, like myself, that had been to a four-year college and had a degree and had a change of heart and decided they wanted to go back for that reason. What really brought everybody together was their passion for boat design and boats in general.
Dr. Lisa: Was there a pivotal moment that enabled you to see that your life really wasn’t going in the direction that felt the best for you and you needed to just step out of that track?
Matt: I don’t think there was a pivotal moment per se. I found myself, it was in Boston and I loved living down there. I had a lot of friends down there. A lot of my friends, a lot of friends from the Portland area end up in Boston so there was a lot going on down there. It was a lot of fun, but I found myself escaping the city every weekend. In the winter it was driving to Vermont to ski and in the summer it was driving to Portland to spend on the water. I felt like I was living in a city to work and leaving to enjoy myself and that was when I … I certainly wasn’t unhappy by any means, but it was sort of that when I realized that was, “Wow, maybe I should think about doing something else and following my passion more?”
Dr. Lisa: Did you ever get any feedback from anyone who said, “Well, you have a four-year degree in economics. You’re doing finance. This is what you’re supposed to be. Maybe you’re wasting this if you go do something else?”
Matt: No. I don’t think so. I think my family definitely encouraged it. Everybody definitely, everybody said, “Hey, realize you still have this economics degree,” but I think I was almost encouraged because of that and I knew that I would have that to come back to and this being the Landing School being a one-year program, you’re making this huge commitment of a year, but it’s not a four-year commitment. You may be giving up things for ten months, but a lot of people encouraged me and I knew I always would have that fall back on.
At the same time, there were the people that discouraged. At the time this was 2009 when the leisure industry in general wasn’t exactly booming. There were people saying, “You’re crazy. You’ll never get a job in boat building out of this.” Those people are out there, but I got a job at the company that I really like and I’m proud to work for and I started two days after I graduated school so
I couldn’t be happier.
Dr. Lisa: Do you still get out on the water?
Matt: Absolutely, all the time, probably not as much as I’d like to because I’d like to get out every day. My wife and I have a small boat that we keep local and we get out on evenings and weekends during the summer and I am fortunate enough to get out on when we launch new designs. There’s quite a bit of engineering and C-trial that takes place on a new design so I can certainly get to be part of that and that’s very rewarding.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of your favorite places to bring your boat?
Matt: Somes Sound, definitely a favorite, sort of the local spot. We actually keep our boat at Some Sounds so we’ll make the run up and down Somes Sounds and maybe anchor up and have a picnic in Valley Cove. In the sound there’s a beautiful area as well. It’s just cruising around Southwest Harbor and the Cranberry Islands and that area. Just in the Bay it’s just a beautiful area before boating.
Dr. Lisa: Matt, how do people find out about the Hinckley Company or the Landing School?
Matt: Let’s see? The Landing School, I think they always try to attend the boat shows and that sort of thing. They have a booth and offer their information on their programs there. I think people should be encouraged to contact the Landing School directly if they’re interested in any of their programs. They have a fantastic staff. It is a small school and they’re more than willing to speak with you about their programs or put you in touch with a graduate, like myself. There have been more than one instance where I’ve been contacted by the school to speak with a prospective student and encourage them one way or the other and just speak about the program and what it’s offered to me.
The Hinckley Company, we’re local in Southwest Harbor and the production plant in Trenton, Maine. I’d encouraged people to stop by and just look at this facility in Southwest Harbor. It’s a beautiful spot. If you’re ever in the area to just swing through the yard there and take a look at the operations and what’s going on. It’s a busy boat yard and it’s neat to see.
Dr. Lisa: Well, Matt, thanks so much for coming down and making the drive, obviously from Southwest Harbor in Trenton. We’ve been speaking with Matt Barton.
He is a former student at the Landing School in Arundel and now works as a engineer at the Hinckley Company. Congratulations on living the dream.
Matt: Thank you. Thanks again for having me.
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Dr. Lisa: As a special gift to our Dr. Lisa Radio Hour friends, today we listen in on our conversation with next week’s guest, Ted Carter and Alan Gunter, co-authors of the inspirational and newly updated book “Earth Calling.” We hope you enjoy this.
Ted: At the perfect moment when the worm should be available for the birds to eat for their offspring and everything like that, the seasons are all screwed up so you can’t really get to those. It’s off-sync so they can’t be nourished in time to feed their young so we’re having die-offs in animal populations and bird populations that are just part of an imbalance that we have set forth in nature. What we’re doing to nature is not natural. This is not natural. It’s very unnatural.
What we’re doing as human beings as earthlings, is also equally as unnatural.
It’s not natural to be this way, but I think greed and a lot of self-interests drives this. We have to keep that in check and we have to bring ourselves home and say, call ourselves home and say, “What are we doing here? Are we all going to let this beautiful ecosystem fall into this great abyss or are we going to really do something about it?” I just can’t sit back and not do anything anymore. I just can’t do it.
Dr. Lisa: I know that as somebody who has really wanted to do good things in life, it has been overwhelming for me at times and I know for people around me to see that you know sooner have dealt with Hurricane Katrina then you have another natural disaster over here. I read the Barbara Kingsolver book about the monarch butterflies and then it actually comes to be. You feel as much as you’re composting and trying to walk instead of drive and you’re doing your thing and not eating as much meat and not using as much water, it still feels so overwhelming. How do you reconnect with what keeps you moving forward in a purposeful and mindful way?
Ted: Lisa, you are a spark, OK. Think of yourself as a spark to ignite the passion in other people because your actions they may seem very inconsequential, but you influence other people and you’re in a place to influence other people through your radio station, through everything that you do so just remember that. You throw the pebble in the water and it ripples and you’re touching a million other people and especially people … Look, the poor and disenfranchised aren’t going to be able to do anything. They’re too busy surviving. It’s the people like us that are really connected and that are running in this economy that can really do something. We have the resource. We have the influence and we should be taking this and stewarding this great opportunity that we have and this great blessing we have in a way that really sparks something in others.
Alan: Right. What you’re talking about is network. This radio station, this broadcast, reaching out is networking as Ted said, “You influence one person and you don’t know where that goes,” because it doesn’t just happen now. It doesn’t just influence somebody now. That happens into perpetuity. This broadcast will be affecting people for a thousand years if we’re still around just because of the nature of influence and because how memory works with our species and the collective unconscious and a whole bunch of other things.
But to get to the first part of your question, yes, it’s frustrating. What can I do? How can I act and that’s really what the action piece is about because everybody’s different. However, many people are listening to this, every one of you has a different calling. Yes, we designed the book so that you could figure that out. First, you re-connect. You re-sensitize yourself to nature, but then join a network. Get involved with other people. That’s where that alchemy of action comes in. That’s where it generates and it is completely out of control. I’ve seen this time and again.
I’m a big activist with the Keystone XL Pipeline and that started out with a 1253 people getting arrested over a period of two weeks and now it re-ignited the environmental movement. There’s no way. It’s blood over into the fracking movement. It’s all over the world now. You never know what you’re one action is going to do in the long term so get into a network. Join one of these organizations. The infrastructures are all set up already and then that’s that alchemy that begins.
Dr. Lisa: You quoted as you were talking about stepping into your soul’s journey, [Telhard De Shardin 00:55:36]. “It would seem that our time is calling us to awaken from our be-numbed and bewitched state to a wonder at and reverence for the astonishing, miraculous and mysterious creation of which we are a part,” and
I think this is important. I think that first we have to start with that wonderment. We have to start with that re-connection to get out there and really feel this in some way so that it’s not just something that we’re dealing with on an intellectual level.
Alan: Right, exactly. It’s that heart connection. We get it cognitively. We can get it intuitively. That compassionate heart is what is awakened when you’re in nature. I like to tell people, “Go out and sit outside. Nobody goes to Times Square to relax.” They go on at in nature and your state is emblematic of the facts. You are the one. You are a magnet for this so people are drawn here because it’s so beautiful. It’s so peaceful. It re-generates people. It heals them. It’s just an amazing place to be. Go sit outside and just take some deep breaths and when you sigh that’s when your cognitive side is giving way to your intuitive side, that genius that is innate in us.
Matthew Fox says, he’s a modern day mystic and he says, “We are starved for awe. We are starved for it. We want to be blown away by something besides video games and FX on Movies. We want to see what’s really there.” That’s part of our connection. That’s what’s nature gives us. Nature is built in awe.
Dr. Lisa: You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, Show Number 151: “Sailing Maine.” Our guests have included Janet Acker, Jess McGreehan and Matt Barton. For more information on our guests and extended interviews visit D-O-C-T-O-RLisa.org. Read our “On the Radio Q&A with Matt Barton” in the August issue of Maine Magazine.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show sign up for our e-newsletter and “like” our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Get Twitter updates by following me as D-O-C-T-O-R Lisa and see my daily running photos as “Bountiful One” on the histogram. We love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our “Sailing Maine” show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
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Tom Shephard of Shephard Financial; Harding Lee Smith of “The Rooms,” and Bangor Savings Bank. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her integrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Our assistant producer is Lee Ann Wement. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our online producer is Kelly Clinton. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is available for download free on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.