Maritime Heritage Alliance to Joe Public: Climb Aboard!

The billowing, white sails of the schooner Madeline are a familiar sight on West Grand Traverse Bay, but some people have viewed its sailing crew as a bit of a closed club.
That all changed last January when the Maritime Heritage Alliance, a 26-year-old nonprofit group, hired its first executive director and made the decision to energetically reach out to youth and adults alike.
A little background: The Madeline is a replica of a tall ship schooner which graced the Great Lakes 150 years ago. Volunteers built the Madeline over a period of five years and launched the schooner in 1990. Since then, volunteer crews have sailed the Madeline to ports from Duluth to Toronto, inviting the public to tour the ship and learn a bit of maritime history.
Change was sparked two years ago when Mike Dow of Charlevoix donated a $1.7 million piece of land on West Grand Traverse Bay to be used by nonprofits, including the Maritime Heritage Alliance, the Great Lakes Children’s Museum and the Watershed Center.
After the Alliance set up a rudimentary workshop on the land, Thompson came up with the idea of using it as a boat restoration classroom for kids. He persuaded the Collectors Foundation, an initiative of Hagerty Insurance, to donate a total of $50,000 over five years for operations. An additional $35,000 in donations came from Leslie Lee of the Herrington Fitch Foundation.
The “Restoration Shop” is located on the shoreline of Lake Michigan on M-22 across the street from the old coal dock. The Maritime Heritage Alliance still needs to raise about $40,000 more to bring the workshop up to code.
Once the renovation is completed, students will learn how to build and restore antique boats. At-risk kids from Traverse City High School will be the first to use the workshop staffed by volunteer mentors. By next fall, kids from the Traverse Bay Area Career Tech Center will also learn how to restore wooden boats.
“It’s an unpaid work experience in a real live shop,” Thompson said. “My vision is there are kids learning to build houses right now. So let’s take them and teach them about boat restoration. They’ll come to our facility four days a week for half a day, and let’s say they fall in love with the whole thing. We’re hoping we can spark an interest, and they can then go on to a full-fledged, boat-building school.”
The workshop will go beyond teaching kids how to build boats; it will also introduce them to sailing, said Rod Jones, a Madeline captain who is volunteering his time to renovate the workshop.
“A gentleman in Harbor Springs gave us a 39-foot boat that he had built 40 years ago. He wants us to use it to take at-risk kids out on the water and teach them sailing and life skills,” Jones said.
In response, Thompson put together 10, one-week sailing programs to help at-risk kids who have been identified by Child and Family Services and the probate court system. “It’s a really neat thing,” he said.
Ultimately, the Maritime Heritage Alliance would like the workshop to be open to the entire community, Jones said.
“I wanted a proper shop, light and airy—so I signed onto this; I wanted a workshop the whole community could use. We have to start out small with the boat building.”
Early interest has been strong, he said. There’s a wood turning club—they turn wood on a lathe to make vases and other objects—that might take a corner of the building for their monthly meetings.
The Maritime Heritage Alliance is also holding classes in January for people interested in learning how to sail and volunteering on the ship during the summer. Several hundred people have gone through the training—and about half of them volunteer on the ship, Thompson said.
“There are five different classes, and as soon as we can, we put the boat together and get people out and doing it for real on the water,” Thompson said.
Classes are held on Thursday nights. For a schedule, see maritimeheritagealliance.org or call the MHA office at 231-946-2647.



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