Let the good times roll.
DECK CREW
Chief Mate "Tripp"
Well, for me, I never realized how big a part of my life sailing was until I wasn't surrounded by it all the time. I grew up a stone's throw from Newport RI, self-styled capitol of the (yachting) universe and spent plenty of time on boats but never even considered working on them until I moved to Vermont and tried working in an office.
In a matter of months I was a deckhand working on a friendship sloop (a Maine expat!) on Lake Champlain and from there I quickly moved on to big traditional sailing ships. The people were interesting and I loved being part of a team and moving around big heavy pieces - sails, spars, anchors. No surprise I eventually ended up on the schooner with the biggest team and the biggest pieces
When I'm not getting paid to sail I spend money on to sail my own boat! If it seems silly then you're thinking too hard about it... I bought a 28' sailboat in Florida and sailed it solo from there to RI during the height of covid. Feeling much like Kevin Costner in the movie Water World by the end of that trip.
I try to cultivate non-sailing hobbies to limited success. They include crossword puzzles, drinking coffee and writing things that no one but me will ever read.
Where you can find me on the Chimes: if I'm not calling sail or back aft with the captain I'm probably fixing something, check the bilges.
Second Mate: Aaron Funk
A Brief Autobiography:
"Alaska born, but raised in the Yankee heartland of the Connecticut River Valley, I’ve spent the past seven years in coasting schooners, making passages along the Atlantic coast of North America and upon the Great Lakes.
To me, a boy brought up amongst sunny hay fields and shady forests, Maine’s unpolished coastline of rugged granite and verdant pine represents a romantic proving ground upon which many a seafarer has cut their teeth.
And thus, in the year 2021, I was drawn to Penobscot Bay and VICTORY CHIMES in search of some Kipling-esque adventure.
This Spring I returned to the schooner for my second season, looking forward to another summer of good company, music and sailing.
I’ve had my fair share of occupations, having made my living as a Zamboni operator, a ski-resort snow-maker, a ranch-hand, a chestnut harvester, and an apprentice carpenter.
But sailing wooden ships seems to fit best into my lovingly anachronistic vision of the world.
In my time away from the ship, I choose to fill my days reading the twentieth century writings of authors such as John Steinbeck and Jack London.
Many an Autumn afternoon has been passed on the porch writing letters to friends, or wandering the woodlands, taking black and white photos and picking old-time banjo tunes.
The day may soon come when I shoulder my oars and set about another pursuit with my life, but until then I’ll continue to peruse the coast of Maine with you jolly lot."
Kate Fournier: Deckhand
Hello there! My name is Kate Fournier, and I am here on VICTORY CHIMES as a deckhand for the 2021 season.
I was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and grew up in the UK and moving around the United States. I’ve not been to school - ever -I was taught at home. Growing up I liked climbing trees, ripping around via unicycle,and playing sandlot baseball. I read Braille, and took fencing for 3 years.
I started sailing 6 years ago, and have since sailed the east coast,west coast, Gulf coast and Great Lakes on several tall ships. Sometime I’d like to cross an ocean, or go around the world, perhaps.
Besides sailing, I enjoy writing and receiving letters, playing banjo to myself, drawing, cooking for others, knitting and reading - my favorite subjects being steam trains and traditional logging in the Pacific Northwest. I like small trucks, small rowboats, and big dogs. I have an appreciation for the things of by-gone days, and have been described as “the youngest old person you’ll ever meet.”
And, while I enjoy sailing and certainly intend to continue doing so throughout my life, ultimately I should like to build myself a little tin-roofed house and finally open up my dinor - “Kate’s Greasy Spoon,” it’s called - I love to talk about it to just about anyone who’ll listen. It’s going to be a cash-only, real friendly kind of establishment - maybe I’ll see you there.
Meghan: Deckhand
I grew up sailing and racing little dinghies in inland Massachusetts but stumbled upon traditional sailing at some point in my high school years.
After my first trip schooning, most of my time was spent day dreaming about getting back out on the water in these awesome boats.
After high school, I took some time off to sail the eastern seaboard and Caribbean and generally have a great time.
Eventually I found myself at The University of Rhode Island where I graduated with a degree in Ocean Engineering.
Although my job prospects in the field were cool, Victory Chimes was cooler, so here I am joining the crew for the 2022 season.
When I’m not working on boats, you may find me reading, starting projects I’ll never finish, or playing with the dogs. That or you know, sailing.
Celia: Deckhand
Hi my name is Celia I was born and raised in Iowa my dad is a band director, so music was a big part of my childhood. Because of that I’ve been playing the the bassoon and also saxophone since fifth grade.
Other than music, my interests haven’t stayed focused. I was always hopping around from tennis, to volleyball, the student director of the spring play, to student Senate, to robotics, to Spanish club.
And that was just high school. I never imagined myself working on a boat because it wasn’t presented as an option. It wasn’t until my older sibling met Chef Katey in college, that I first heard the idea.
Before that seed was planted, I graduated high school and went to college in Portland, Oregon, potentially for anthropology. However, that wasn’t what I wanted, so I decided to travel instead. I made it to Brazil and Puerto Rico before I got the call that I got the job on the Victory Chimes. Other than one FaceTime Q&A with Katie, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, but I was super excited for this new adventure. It is a chance to explore and learn new things, which I love to do.
So even though my sailing journey has been short, Victory Chimes has made it enjoyable and interesting to say the least.
Eva Keyes: Deckhand
I was introduced to sailing a bit later in life. I grew up swimming and going to the beach in the summer but I was exposed to sailing when I participated in a SEA Semester on the Robert C Seamans. I had had never spent more than an afternoon on the water but I soon discovered that sailing was something I loved.
After SEA I went back to regular school at Eckerd College for environmental studies and coastal management. Half way through the semester COVID came along and everything switched to online. I quickly learned that online classes were not for me, but I finished the semester. And that summer I joined the schooner Harvey Gamage as a deckhand and that is where I stayed for almost a year. I did a yard period and two semester program as a teacher, deckhand, and eventually third mate.
When I’m off the ship I go to school (when it’s not online) hike, and go sailing on smaller vessels as much as possible.
Cameo Crew:
There are folks that come to help for a weekend or a few weeks, but not long enough to submit a bio. If you see a picture of someone not listed above, that's them!
GALLEY CREW
Chef Katey
I have always moved through the world working with my hands. From carpentry and wood working, to creating art, cooking, and sailing.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, constantly surrounded by water. I identified with the ocean, lakes, rivers, and little creeks all around me. I was constantly exploring and always searching for new adventures. However, It wasn’t until college that I finally found sailing. I spent 6 weeks on a tall ship in New Zealand and fell in love.
I started working on a tall ship based out of Cape Cod as a steward. As part of that community, we sailed the entire Eastern seaboard twice, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and around the Gulf of Mexico. And now I’m here as a galley hand/sous chef working with one of my best friends. I love cooking, and I consider it a gift to be able to bring people together everyday around the table.
When I’m not sailing, I’m looking for another boat to sail on. I love to read, write plays, and carve spoons. One day I hope to start an artist residency program onboard a sailboat for artists to come together and work on their craft, whatever it may be.
Ava Kiss: Sous Chef
When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, most answer, a firefighter, the president, or an astronaut. I said, “I want to sail around the world”. This was likely an influence of growing up in an old whaling town on the East End of Long Island, always enchanted by the ocean and sea-going professions.
I left home to study Oceanography first for a year at warm and sunny Eckerd College in Florida, then to cold, land-locked, but beautiful, Cornell University in New York, where I recently received my bachelors degree in Earth and Atmospheric Science studying ancient oceans preserved in the rock record.
If you asked my family they would tell you I was the pickiest eater as a kid. But that didn’t mean I was disinterested in food. Before I could even walk, all I would watch on TV were cooking shows and I would often ask my grandmother questions about the food she was cooking. The same food that would later fight to have me clean off my plate by the end of dinner.
I didn’t know it then but those early interests were formative to my evolving passion for cooking.
While my access to sailing wasn’t always easy, I’d try to get out on a boat, no matter the size, as often as I could, from FJs on freshwater to racing 30 footers with the old dudes in town.
When the pandemic started, I took the opportunity to study and sail on the tall ship Corwith Cramer with Sea Education Association.
And that brings me here, working as a sous chef/galley hand on the schooner VICTORY CHIMES doing two things I love most cooking and sailing.
In the near future I hope try my hand at aquaculture and go back to school to research climate solutions within the ocean.
Anthony: Galley Hand
“Call me Dishmael.
There's no one road by which a man finds himself at the sink of the Victory Chimes, up before (or in tandem with or possibly slightly after) the sun to man the handles and the twin steel drains, fraught with the caprice of scalding waters within a vessel that is similarly fraught with its own yet larger quantities of water (kept external-wise to the galley, of course).
The reader might expect that mine is the usual, overdone tale of a 33 year old social worker, raised on a dairy farm in Vermont, coming to Rockland absent any sailing knowledge.
Just another bookworm rolling up to the dock in his Corolla with his dusty Bachelor of History degree tucked into a fully assembled bookshelf in the backseat between Tolkien's The Silmarillion and a copy of Palgrave's Golden Lyric Treasury (personally defaced with margin notes, as expected).
Well, good sir or madame! You may set aside such workaday notions regarding me, for I am unlike the other hordes of freckle-faced UVM alumni here to plague the air with six months of fiddle lessons under their belt, doubtlessly inspired to pick an instrument up, as I was, by a six night trip aboard the Chimes in September 2021.
What sets me apart? Well, my friends, I am armed by an additional two things: a positive mental attitude and... a FINISHED 2022 Victory Chimes Crew bio!
FPA (facetious preamble aside), I have the incredibly good fortune to count the Chief Mate here as one of my oldest and closest friends. That is the avenue by which I found myself here at the start of fit-out in April as the Chimes'svintage newbie.
I've been told my coming here on a whim, leaving a job of 10 years, is very "character in a novel".
I've been told my coming here on a whim, leaving a job of 10 years, is very "character in a novel".
Well, I am a novel character, of a sort. I enjoy bad puns and coming up with impromptu lyrics. I can be heard at a distance of several miles.
I've wracked up a plethora of Tony-based nicknames in three months here despite never being a Tony before.
I write poetry occasionally, I try to see the good in everyone, I listen to Gordon Lightfoot frequently, I love being in nature and talking about my family.
Oh, I've also never been away from my Green Mountains for more than two consecutive weeks, a personal tidbit that has fairly shocked a more well-traveled crew member (who shall remain nameless and also joined by two
others reacting literally as I write this).
It may not resonate with people who haven't lived so rooted to a place as I have, but there's a sense of displacement when you're removed entirely the well-worn cycle of seasons at home for the first time in three decades.
Your spirit gets set like a metronome to the things it expects to be experiencing: seeing the snow melt off familiar mountains, watching the familiar wildflowers coming up in familiar woods, hearing the returning birds with their familiar songs.
But! As attached as I am to my country mouseisms, it's been absolutely worth breaking my established rhythm for the opportunity to be here, as I knew it would the second I stepped off the Chimes last September.
At my age, it's no exaggeration to say that that one week as a relief galley hand changed the course of my life; I felt so at home here that I dropped everything I'd ever known (except the combination attic/garage load in my car) to be here an entire season. Three months of laughter and fond memories with new friends later, and my gratitude just keeps a- growing.
Now, if that isn't an earnest testimonial to the dignity and wonder of the Victory Chimes, as well as the goodness of her captain and crew, I don't know what is.
Hope to see you aboard,
The Right Honourable Anthony R. St. Pierre, esq.
(This crew bio was made possible by the good people at Zebra, makers of the F-301 0.7 mm black ballpoint pen.
Reserve yours today while supplies last!)