Rebecca is a Seguin 44 sailboat restored by College of the Atlantic students and now offering experiential learning opportunities off the COA waterfront. Credit: Malek Hinnawi ’25
College of the Atlantic’s newest classroom cuts an elegant line across the waters of Frenchman Bay.
Rebecca is a 1984 Lyman-Morse Seguin 44 sailing yacht that was painstakingly restored over many months by COA boat captain and waterfront program director Toby Stephenson ’98 and scores of COA students. The boat is now being used for off-shore research, as a tool for expeditionary classes exploring Maine’s coastal islands and harbors, and as a welcoming way for humanities courses to extend their classrooms onto the water.
“Rebecca represents a new chapter for interdisciplinary learning at College of the Atlantic, by innovatively bringing some of the humanities and the marine world together,” Stephenson said. “The first experiment was making her sail. Now our work is to implement her into the college curriculum.”
College of the Atlantic boat captain and waterfront program director Toby Stephenson '98 led the restoration of Rebecca, COA's Seguin 44 sailboat and floating classroom. Credit: Malek Hinnawi ’25
Rebecca is named in honor of Rebecca Anne Clark ’96, who was a casualty of the 2004 tsunami that devastated coastal Thailand. At the time of the disaster, Clark was in Thailand working for an NGO dedicated to the study and protection of sea turtles and mangrove forests. In the years before that, Clark had sailed the globe as part of the Voyage of the Odyssey, a five-year scientific project to study the health of the world’s oceans led by The Ocean Alliance and whale researcher Dr. Roger Payne.
“Rebecca was an absolutely wonderful, brilliant person, and was a very dear friend of the college. Everybody loved Rebecca because she was just so fun and kind,” Stephenson said. “She was a scientist who sailed the world studying marine mammals, and we’re hoping some of our students might have some of those chances too.”
Rebecca, the first large sailing vessel COA has owned, is setting the stage for previously unattainable experiences, Stephenson said. Stephenson, his crew, and a handful of other students, alumx, and faculty have been working to make the most out of this opportunity and create a special, unique program that the entire community can benefit from.
One of those students is Nils Midtun ’24, who, as one of Stephenson’s work study students, worked on restoring the boat for over a year.
“One of my favorite aspects of working on Rebecca was the restoration. Toby put a lot of focus on making it about teaching and learning instead of contracting the work out. It was such a valuable experience, and I feel much more confident about taking on boat projects in the future,” Midtun said. “I’m really glad COA has great hands-on learning opportunities like this that I can’t get in the classroom.”
The restoration of Rebecca was a community effort, Midtun said. First-year students in the Human Ecology Core Course spent time sanding the boat while they learned about focusing on a task and connecting to it in the present moment. COA alumnx and staff with COA Allied Whale also joined in the restoration.
Nils Midtun '24 contributed to the restoration of Rebecca for over a year and now enjoys sailing Frenchman Bay on the Seguin 44 boat. “I'm really glad COA has great hands-on learning opportunities like this that I can't get in the classroom,” he said. Credit: Malek Hinnawi ’25
“Rebecca came to us in shambles, had a lot of holes in it, was in dire need of new paint, all the electrical work, the plumbing, everything had to be done… and hours and hours and hours of sanding,” Midtun said. “We banged our heads many times working on the boat, both figuratively and literally, and it’s finally in the water so that’s pretty awesome.”
New ideas for integrating Rebecca into the COA curriculum are generating from many directions. For Ela Keagan ’21, the idea of learning about the history of the Atlantic marine industry while sailing on Rebecca became her senior project, within which she designed a proposed new course.
“The idea would be to ground people more deeply in the history of the Maritimes, including topics like the slave trade, the fishing industry, and the sailors that made up the early navies. Being on a boat while you’re talking about these things, and hopefully getting a little uncomfortable, and a little tired, and a little homesick, the idea was that it would give students deeper insight into people’s lives a hundred years ago,” Stephenson said. The course would incorporate books such as The Black Atlantic, and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
Marine science courses tend to be the most obvious matches for utilizing the water, but a few humanities professors have already begun talking with Stephenson about courses they would be interested in teaching that would incorporate sailing on Rebecca. The boat will also allow for scientific research unique to sailboats, such as recording the sound of right whales in the Gulf of Maine, which can only be done because Rebecca doesn’t require the use of a loud engine.
“It’s a big experiment, so whatever happens, whatever takes is going to be what it is, and I suspect it will change a lot,” said Stephenson. “That’s what makes the college such a wonderful place, that we are always experimenting with things, and our students help devise that experimentation and help make it happen.”
Rebecca was originally named Rainbow, and sailed around the world in the 1990s. Since then, she has spent most of her time in the North Atlantic, changed owners twice, and been renamed each time. The boat was donated to COA as River Gull, and picked up and sailed back from the Hudson River by Stephenson, Gaelen Hall ’21, Lindsey Jones MPhil ’18, Chris Tremblay ’03 and COA research associate Tanya Lubansky. The boat was originally designed by Sparkman & Stephens and built by Maine’s legendary Lyman-Morse boat building company. It is one of just 14 Seguin 44s made.
The effort to restore Rebecca required innovative solutions, dedication, and Stephenson’s passionate, knowledgeable, and creative vision, said Midtun.
“Toby met a lot of resistance from people that were scared because it’s a big boat and a huge project, but we showed them if you want something and are willing, if you are open to doing something and putting in the hours, you can make it happen,” said Midtun. “Without Toby being a driving motivator, and his vision and dream, it couldn’t have been done. This experience demonstrates how much of a resource Toby is to COA. I have a lot of admiration and respect for my captain Toby… he has that effect on people.”
College of the Atlantic students sailing aboard Rebecca, a Seguin 44 restored in house that offers abundant opportunities for experiential learning.