Will Goldenheim, St. Mary’s rowing coach and head of nonprofit North Shore Maritime Center, said what 11 teenagers did last week “couldn’t have been created in a different setting.”
For five days and four nights, Goldenheim took Lynn kids to Freeport, Maine to board and live in a tall sailing ship.
“We blocked off a week of programming specifically for kids from our area,” said Goldenheim, who partnered with nonprofit Sailing Ships Maine for the trip. “None of the kids had to pay anything for it.”
It was free due to the fundraising of NSMC, which provided access, as well as transportation from Healey Bus Company in Lynn.
After Goldenheim – who also drives for Healey and St. Mary’s – drove the bus up to Freeport, it was go-time.
“The captains met them at the dock and, immediately, they were running the show,” Goldenheim said. “The kids boarded, they put their stuff away in very tight quarters… And then, spent the next five days on the ship.”
Sailing may be the action, but Goldenheim said the soon-to-be annual trip (“I hope so,” he said) was all about life.
“How to sail, how to live with other people in a tight space for a handful of days, knot-tying, navigation, cooking, cleaning, responsibility, all of these different things we need in life,” Goldenheim said. “You can ultimately say this trip wasn’t really about the sailing, but it was about a really cool life experience.”
“And if you don’t do your job, it affects every other person,” Goldenheim said.
The list goes on. From reading the winds and water, to map-reading, and to making sure the kids knew “every piece of that ship they were on has a specific job,” Goldenheim said feedback was strong.
“The best, and I think most representative, feedback I got was, ‘I’m definitely doing this next year,’” Goldenheim said. “And that was from a kid who didn’t even know if we were going to do this next year. He just came off the ship and said it to me when I met him off the dock.”
Another plus from the trip: relationship-building. Although some were friends heading in, Goldenheim said everyone got a little bit tighter after the experience.
“All smiles,” Goldenheim said. “They were acting differently with each other on Friday than they were on Monday.”
On top of the smell – even from 30 yards away according to Goldenheim – he added the kids were tired, but in a good way.
“Fatigue for sure,” Goldenheim said. “They were tired and didn’t have their normal routine.”
Goldenheim had been “floating this idea” of NSMC for a while before its launch in 2020.
“I decided it was time to get it going. I wanted to make sure people in Lynn, and in surrounding communities as well, had access to water sports and maritime education,” Goldenheim said. “I thought it would be a really cool idea to open up the world to these kids.”
Goldenheim wants members of NSMC to know “you belong” and “nobody will ever be turned away for financial reasons.”
“These aren’t sports that are reserved for any one population,” Goldenheim said. “Everybody who comes through our proverbial doors at North Shore Maritime Center, you belong where you are. You deserve to be here.”
For more information on North Shore Maritime Center, Inc., contact [email protected] or visit Facebook (North Shore Maritime Center) and Instagram (northshoremaritimecenterinc).
