The Seafaring Volunteer

“Thanks very much for the lift, Abby. But would you mind taking me back to my car? I left my phone behind, and I can’t do without that for four weeks,” I said after we had just checked in for boarding the ferry with fifteen minutes to go before departure.

Benny, the boat captain of The Voyageur, reminded me that we needed to be back within those fifteen minutes, or our luggage would arrive at Isle Royale without us.

Abby didn’t blink as we piled into her car for the quick ten-minute trip back and forth to where I parked my Jeep. The remote parking saves me the $150 or so it would have taken to park in the ferry lot, but is a bit far to walk. I know the money would have gone to the Grand Portage Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa, but hey, that’s a pile of money for a Dutchman.

Abby was dressed in what looked like cozy pajama-style pants, a T-shirt bearing the image of a tall ship schooner, and a comfortable fleece coat. She had a relaxed, pleasant laugh, and seemed someone at ease in remote circumstances and in adverse conditions. Just right for a week on a lighthouse in the middle of Lake Superior.

What wasn’t obvious is that she holds a degree in mechanical engineering, with a minor in metal processing (think foundries), serves as a chief engineer on tall ships (and sometimes as a cook), and spends most of her time on ships of all kinds in various places around the world.

Engineering?

“It’s fun to know how things work. I would always break everything in our house so I could to learn… and we had all the shop stuff in our basement available. I could play with the table saw and go play with all the stuff in the basement. My mother had a craft business, so I could say, Okay, I want to make this, and I could usually find everything I needed in the basement, stealing from both of their stuff.”

Her love of tall ships, however, started with a week-long program in middle school on the flagship of Wisconsin, The Dennis Sullivan, out of Milwaukee. Though she didn’t have that much interest in boats during high school and college, after a couple of internships at different foundries, she volunteered as a deck hand on that sailing school ship for a summer after graduating from college. At the end of that season, on her way to a job at the foundry where she interned, and following the loss of the ship's engineer, she was given a field promotion to engineer on the boat and took that job instead. 

The Dennis Sullivan, in it's better days

After the summer season, she went south to spend the winter and volunteer on the Kalmar Nyckel, a 1600’s Swedish war vessel, in Delaware, and worked on other tall ships like the Lynx through the winters. After three seasons, at the onset of the pandemic, the owners of the Sullivan fired all the crew so the ship could be sidelined at the dock. Out of a job, she decided to take a position on the EPA research ship Lake Explorer II, based in Superior, WI. In the winter, she returned to the Nyckel, sometimes as a volunteer, sometimes as paid staff, and bounced around other tall ships up and down the eastern sea coast.

The Kalmar Nickel - Abby's favorite ship as a mariner

Abby is between summer jobs now, after leaving the EPA job when that boat was destined for a long-term maintenance haul-out. While waiting for her new job with the new University of Wisconsin research boat when it's delivered, perhaps yet this year, she chose to volunteer with the Rock of Ages lighthouse.

“Help me understand the bridge between tall ships and engineering and the Rock of Ages lighthouse volunteer gig?” I asked.

“I like the maritime stuff. I find history interesting, which is why I worked on the Badger; it was a cool, historic boat that I had the chance to work on. Science, Great Lakes-focused stuff. Basically, whatever way you can mix maritime, science, history, and Great Lakes together, and lighthouses do that.”

The Badger: A National Historic Landmark
The last working coal-fired steamship on the Great Lakes

She volunteered at White Shoal light a few times, so she had experience with lighthouse projects. While Rock of Ages was a closer opportunity to where she lives now, it is much less accessible, making the experience more intense.

“It was super cool to work in an offshore light, so different from the onshore lighthouses. How they’re set up, rather than having your house with the tower next to it, having the whole structure of the lighthouse as living space. They have their worksite, like an industrial site, but also their living spaces - it’s kind of like a boat. Out in the middle of nowhere, you’re self-sufficient. You gotta survive with what you have there, same as if you’re out in the middle of the ocean.”

Who knows what adventure Abby will turn to next? She doesn't. But she knows, more likely than not, it involves a tall ship.