ELLEN’S COFFEE SHOP, Chestertown, Jan. 25. I know who she is the minute she walks in the door. Finger-brushed long wavy hair, brown canvas overalls, many layers of shirts and wearing no coat on a 27-degree day. No gloves, either. She slides into the booth. I sense she’s uncomfortable. It is rather toasty in here; and she is wearing multiple layers, none of which may be removed.
I slide the menu across the table. “Order anything you want.”
“I’ve already eaten,” she says.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Captain Banks-Christensen standing on the bowsprit
It could be the worn canvas overalls, but I have this sense of wind, weather and high seas adventure about this person sitting opposite me. I just want to blurt out, so what’s it like being girl captain of the Sultana!? But instead I sort of mumble, “Is it scary, having all that responsibiliy?”
“I don’t know.” The Captain pauses, looks down at her weathered hands. “Probably. But it’s my job. Like a financial manager manages people’s money all day, my job is what I’m supposed to do. If I weren’t comfortable with it I probably wouldn’t do it.”
(Note to self: sailing on the Sultana with this woman in charge is probably very safe.)
“It’s the life I decided for myself; I have to be comfortable with it.” She surveys the room like a caged seabird. Her eyes say, next question?
I feel an urge to order an english muffin. Waitress!
A Philadelphia native and cum-laude graduate of Alfred University, Banks-Christensen has served as the Executive Captain of the schooner Quinnipiack out of New Haven, CT. She has also served as Mate on several traditional sailing vessels including the schooners Providence, A.J. Meerwald, Westward, and Spirit of Massachusetts. She holds a United States Coast Guard 200 Ton Near Coastal Master’s License.
You might think someone so young and accomplished might have grown up on or around boats, so I’m surprised to find out that Banks-Christensen didn’t start sailing until her senior year in college. She enrolled in SEA Semester, a study-abroad program.
You can read all about SEA Semester online, but this quote from their website pretty much sums it up: “Perhaps you want to have an international experience; perhaps you are intrigued that the world is mostly water and you want to know more about how the oceans work. Perhaps you want to understand how we are ONE world, land and sea, connected to our past and to each other. Perhaps you just want to do something very, very exciting and different from what others are doing. If any of these are true, give us a look.”
Pause button: I am outraged that I didn’t know about this when I was in college.
I offer her half of my english muffin.
“No, thanks.”
She remembers the program fondly, adding that is it known for its strong academics. No slouching there. But sailing the deep ocean on a traditional vessel, well that must really be something . . . .
“We learned nautical science, which included celestial navigation, maritime literature and oceanography. Our first 6-week sail was from Woodshole to Trinidad & Tobago and then onto St. Croix. We used traditional navigation techniques: dead reckoning, sextants, plotting a chart, and no GPS. One day they covered the compass for 24 hours. When we compared the two charts, one using traditional navigation to the acutal GPS, we were less than a mile off.”
“Half the people who have boats wouldn’t have a clue where they were without a GPS,” she adds.
I wondered if Banks-Christensen and her crew ever employed those ancient techniques on the Sultana, but she said they do mostly inland sailing, and for that they use charts and buoys. She did note that the bay has a lot of nooks and crannies, and you need a clear horizon to use a sextant.
SULTANA
I ventured a guess that by the end of the SEA semester, she was madly in love with sailing.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. School was hard for me. I was a good student, but I didn’t like sitting at a desk inside listening to people talk. I liked art classes, particularly glass casting and woodworking. After I graduated I didn’t know what to do. I thought: well, I like sailing and I like woodworking; maybe I can be a carpenter on a boat. So I got a job as a ship’s carpenter. The title was sort of a joke, since I knew nothing about building anything on a boat.”
“It’s very different from building something on land. On a boat things have more shape to them. I can’t say I was ever very good at it.” Banks-Christensen shakes her head ruefully. “If I had to build something on the Sultana, I’d just call John Swain.”
The next season she worked on the Providence as the engineer, which meant taking care of the engine and the generators.
“I was taught how to check the engine, etc. You’re so excited to be on the boat you want to try everything. Somebody’s changing the oil and I would jump up and ask, Can I help? Deck hands want to know how to do everything. On the Sultana, a lot of deck hands sail for the year between college and grad school. They don’t think of sailing as a real job.”
She grins. “Sometimes I don’t think of it as a real job, either. In a real job you’re always a little miserable.”
Tanya Banks-Christensen
A few questions I just have to ask:
KC: What is your next goal?
TBC: I’ve never known what I wanted to do. I’ve never had any plans. No big goals. No dreams per se.
KC: Do you ever get seasick?
TBC: Sure, but not so much any more.
KC: Do you have any special tricks for dealing with it?”
TBC: Puke and rally.
KC: You’re a young female captain; has your authority ever been challenged?
TBC: Nooooo. At least I don’t think so. No, no sexist jerks. Not here. And if they did, I didn’t pay any attetion to it.
She laughs. She sips her mug of black coffee. When she looks up her face is straight. “I’m a person doing a job. If somebody thinks I should do it another way, I’m going to say, this is how I do it.”
Whether there has been or ever should be any of that stuff, it’s clear that Captain Banks-Christensen isn’t interested in focusing on it.
“Sultana is a great organization to work for. It’s a boat that puts programming first, which is rare. It’s so hard to keep a nonprofit going. A lot of boats get into all kinds of stuff, day sailing etc. to make money, and they end up losing sight of why they started in the first place. Sultana is always focused first on our mission.”
We exit Ellen’s and stand outside on the parking lot. It’s freezing, but Banks-Christensen seems fine. She says if I need to get in touch it’s best to call on her cell phone. We talk lousy reception in Chestertown and cell phone carriers. “Verizon works just about anywhere on the bay,” she says, turning her head in the direction of the river.
I don’t know why this little piece of information thrills me so.
Launched in 2001, SULTANA is a replica of a 1768 Royal Navy schooner that is used to provide educational programs in history and environmental science for students from around the Chesapeake Bay. For 2011 trip dates and itineraries, see http://www.sultanaprojects.org
Wonderful, Kelly. Tanya is first rate! Thank you both.
Captain Tanya is simply the best – Sultana and Chestertown are lucky to have her. There are few people who haven’t had her particular job that can really understand the incredible variety of skills that it requires. One day Tanya can be overseeing the rebuilding of Sultana’s transmission, the next she might be training new crew to teach children about the environment of the Chesapeake, and the next she could be taking care of a child who is homesick in the middle of the night because it’s their first time away from home. There are plenty of people who can handle one of these jobs, but it takes a very special person to manage all of them at once!
Thanks for an interesting read Kelly.