11 minute read
Christmas Vacation
Marlinspike tracked down SEA President John Wigglesworth just before Labor Day after hearing through the grapevine — not very accurately, as it turned out — that the Cramer was to be mothballed.
John Wigglesworth: So, you heard that Cramer was going to be “mothballed”?
Marlinspike: Yeah, I did hear that! “Mothballed” is obviously a dramatic word to use, but I thought “I should give John a call and see what's going on there.” Tell us — what challenges is SEA experiencing right now?
JW: Well, when I returned to SEA back in November [as interim President], we were still operating the two brigantines in the undergraduate program, which is traditionally the default understanding of SEA, in our “sea semester” — six weeks on land followed by six weeks at sea, throughout the year. That's traditionally what we’ve done, but we have been slowly moving away from that over a period of time. We've been offering different types of undergraduate programs that still involve time at sea and time onshore, but the curriculum of each program is slightly different, based on the cruise tracks.
As of November we were still operating the model of two brigantines, Robert Seamans operating in the Pacific and Corwith Cramer in the Atlantic. But both due to the fallout from COVID and undergraduates rethinking their relationship with colleges and the study-abroad concept, the enrollment numbers at that time were not good. Basically we had two really expen- sive boats and we weren’t seeing the numbers of undergraduates we needed to have a sustainable model.
MS: Were you drawing undergraduates only from specific colleges, or could a student from any college in America sign up for one of those traditional programs?
JW: Anyone can apply to SEA.
MS: But most of your applicants were coming from a small group of institutions..?
JW: Most students come from the Northeast area, but there is more and more representation around the country.
MS: OK, sorry to interrupt. You were saying: enrollments haven’t been great since COVID.
JW: Yeah, enrollment for undergraduates was not good. So we did our best to look at all the external factors that were influencing that trend. And we looked at the significant increase in secondary school programming and interest in what we do at the high school level. We had been doing high school programs in the summer to a certain extent for a while, but it was never a major emphasis. It was always the undergraduate program. We looked at the undergraduate trend and realized that we need to do much better marketing and outreach and so on, and try to recapture the undergraduates who were navigating their way through college after COVID. And then we looked at rising increase in secondary schools and we also factored in the cost of operating Cramer year-round.
We ended up moving in a couple of different directions. To sum up, we opted to focus our undergraduate work and programming on the Seamans, blue-water operation in the Pacific, a variety of different semesterlength undergraduate programs, including time on shore in Woods Hole. Then they go to the ship out on the Pacific, and that's our undergraduate platform classroom, if you will.
And then to take advantage of the increase in our secondary school programs, combined with trying to minimize operational costs of Cramer, we said, “OK, let's expand the focus on secondary schools and increase the season.” This puts us in a place where we're operating seasonally, like many other tall ships and schooners do. We created a season for Cramer that will basically be May through October, and we’ll use that time to fill out the secondary school programs as well as create programs in the form of partnerships with as Woods Hole Oceanographic, MBL, the Wharton School of Business and so on.
And changing the season for Cramer enabled us to partner with Proctor Academy on the Ocean Classroom program that has traditionally been done on Harvey Gamage and other boats that you know about.
MS: That was the press release that came out this spring.
JW: So now Ocean Classroom is going to be at SEA and those students come in next week and will be on Cramer in October; then in November we're going to haul out the Kramer — this year, anyways, in Newport, Rhode Island —and put a cover on and do some work on the decks and then put her back into service, uprig in April and carry on with programming in May through October. That's the current model operation: undergraduates on the Seamans, secondary school program and partnership programs on Cramer
SEA is bigger than our ships; meaning that, our focus is education about the oceans. Our new model will include shore-based classes that educate about the oceans but don't necessarily tie to the ships, but would utilize all the resources in Woods Hole. SEA is moving in a direction that fills out our campus with programs based around ocean education and research, and that offers programming that could be shore-based or shipbased.
For example, this summer we had three high school programs going on concurrently. One group was on the Cramer on Sea Expedition. We had another group on shore doing a program that looked at the coastal habitat of the Cape Cod area; they did not go to sea. And then we had an online class that was connecting students around the world. So we had three different things going on, all about ocean education. Only one of those three things included time at sea.
In a nutshell, we're trying to pivot SEA’s operational model, to produce more revenue at less cost.
MS: Does that make crewing and staffing more challenging, when you take a boat out of service and put her back into service, as opposed to providing continual employment for captain and crew?
JW: Good question. As you well know, the crewing challenge for everybody is relentless. Just the effort to get crew to fill out the programs is ongoing. Licensed crew are increasingly hard to find.
To your question, we're trying to create a situation that is more attractive to crew than what we currently have now. Meaning that if we can find a solid seasonal team for Cramer with built-in compensations that include time off, things like that, we're hoping to create a scenario where it would be attractive to sail on the Cramer through the season. Currently the Cramer programs have been filled trip by trip by trip and that's been hard to manage.
On the Seamans, crew are drawn to the Seamans because of the cruise track and so on. So it's still a challenge, but the Seamans team is fairly consistent.
MS: So you’re saying that the Cramer will be out of service from November to May each year for the foreseeable future. This isn’t a one-year expedient that you hit on because that deck project needs to be done.
JW: Yeah. For the foreseeable future, this will be the plan. What would change it is if we end up with a big waiting list to go out on Seamans — undergraduates — in which case one could see a scenario where we sail south with Proctor Academy, and then after that trip, we'd pick up an undergraduate program in the Caribbean on Cramer. But that's down the road. But we've got a ways to go to get a waiting list!
MS: Give me a deeper dive into the trends with undergraduates. I understand that during COVID, there was a disruption in demand and legitimate concern about the future, but enrollment hasn’t gone back to what it was. I'm curious if you have theories as to why that is.
JW: Good question. In the past, the draw of going to sea — going offshore, out of sight of land, that really dynamic experience combined with the academic program we offered and the credit that came with it, was really exciting. It still is for some. But there's another layer that we're trying to address.
The future for students today is unknown because of the health of our planet and the slow demise of our oceans. And in order to address that uncertainty, and the anxiety that goes with it, students want a program where they come out with some sort of agency about what they can do as individuals. Students are interested in understanding the oceans and ocean systems, the interaction of the oceans and the atmosphere, so that they come out of it with tools that they can work with to create careers in the world of ocean climate, in the health of the planet, that gives them a sense of agency.
In the past, the draw was to go to sea on a traditional vessel. I think more and more, the draws is: I want to go out, I want to learn about the ocean, so that I can have a sense that I can somehow control my future.
MS: And what can you do to let undergraduates around the country know about this opportunity?
JW: We are working on that piece right now. We have institutional relations managers in California, in the Midwest, and a couple in the Northeast. Their job is to visit and interact with colleges and universities in their area. We have ongoing faculty visits to colleges and universities. We're trying to ramp up our social media. But after 50 years, it’s amazing that so few people know about SEA. Getting the word out and speaking to the concept of ocean education, it’s something that we're just constantly doing.
MS: What you need is a reality TV show, John, set on one of the brigantines!
JW: Yeah. Yeah.
The word “partnership” is very much in the mix now. SEA traditionally has always sort of done it on our own, this is what we do, and worked not necessarily in isolation, but also not seeking out partnerships. Proctor Academy is one of those new partnerships that came together organically. They needed a ship and we just opened up our schedule to be able to accept their timeframe. So that was pretty cool.
We have a partnership with Stanford University and we do a semester length program with 'em every other year.
Stanford comes to us with a block of students, and so we're not scrambling around trying to sign up individuals to fill up that program. The School for Field Studies has focused on field-based campuses around the globe. We're working on a partnership with the idea that the two of us together will be greater than each of us as individuals.
MS: All right, so Cramer is a long way from being mothballed…
JW: No, but Cramer is 37 years old, right? And it’s very much on our minds: what's the remaining useful life of Cramer? So the current schedule eases up the year-long smashing that the vessel gets, it gives her a little bit of a rest. It also serves the purpose of extend-
ing the useful life of Cramer because of that. And that gives SEA more time to think carefully about what comes next after Cramer.
Is there another, or do we just operate one boat? If we operate two, what kind of boat might our next one be? Maybe something a little bit simpler that serves the purpose of the program, but doesn't require the licensing that we currently need.
Using Cramer seasonally buys us a little more time to address those questions.
MS: So SEA might consider a smaller vessel, or one operating on a limited route?
JW: If you look at the hundred ships registered with Tall Ships America, there's only three of ‘em that are certified to do bluewater stuff and two of 'em are SEA boats. These are two of the last vestiges of traditional sail training vessels that can go bluewater. And that's something not to turn away from. I mean, we see that as an obligation. We’ve got to keep that going!
This ties into the big question of, if we have another ship to replace Cramer, do we want to go in the direction of ocean certification so that we can go bluewater? Because there's only three of us who are US-flagged to go offshore.
And that is at the very essence. We are our ships, and we are more than our ships. We are about Ocean Education. That said, the whole romance of blue water operations is important to us.
