Captain Martyn Clark
Sail Training Consultant
As an educational consultant to Lynx, Captain Martyn Clark has set up all sail training activities for the schooner including its curriculums, programs, syllabuses, methodologies and staffing. As a current director of the American Sail Training Association, based in Newport, Rhode Island, Captain Clark advises more than 240 programs on various vessels, making him "more than qualified for this duty," says Woodson K. Woods, executive director of Woods Maritime.
As founder and executive director of the Sail and Life Training (SALTS) based out of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Captain Clark has dedicated most of his adult life to sailing and maritime education. SALTS currently trains approximately 1,000 young people a year and is Canada's largest sail training organization. It was cited in 1998 as the best sailing training program in North America by the American Sail Training Association, having been selected from more than 250 ships and organizations.
Captain Clark's successful experience in sailing and teaching as well as restoring and managing large vessels has resulted in numerous awards and citations over the past 30 years. Starting in 1981, he and his wife Margaret restored the schooner Robertson II and developed its sail training programs. They also built the brigantine Spirit of Chemainus and schooners Pacific Swift and Pacific Grace, all of which have been honored for their design and construction.
A native of Toronto, Ontario and the father of five daughters, Captain Clark has also won awards for his seamanship and restorations. Author of nautical articles, travel accounts and short stories, he holds several honorary titles and awards.
SAIL TRAINING PROGRAM ABOARD LYNX TO STRESS INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN HISTORICAL SETTING
By Captain Martyn Clark, Educational Consultant
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
--- William Butler Yeats
The sail training program development aboard Lynx will be "the lighting of a fire" - on water. Lynx will operate as not only a sail training vessel but also a home for adventure. In addition to preserving seafaring traditions, she will serve as a classroom primarily for the study of historical, environmental and ecological issues.
While Lynx is available for education seminars, corporate and personal charters, special events, documentary and film use, and historic reenactments, she will primarily undertake "cruizes of opportunity" providing youthful and adult participants with the challenges leading to personal growth and awareness through the historical experience of life at sea aboard a traditional 1812 privateer.
The education programs aboard Lynx abide by not only the rules of the sea but also the realities of today's world. They are designed to support and enhance national, state and local education goals. Subjects like history, science, math, art, music, sociology and literature will come alive and have personal meaning. The educational curricula for Lynx programs will be specially designed for use via Internet and will be adjusted for age, interests and abilities of specific participants.
More important, individual leadership, organizational and social skills will reveal themselves in the values of integrity and honesty found in teamwork and seamanship. These life-affirming, life-enhancing and life-changing qualities have a reach far greater than the duties and responsibilities of a seaman aboard ship.
The education curriculum aboard Lynx is based on the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for the education of today's youth, but difficult to teach in a traditional classroom. It goes beyond general familiarization of the vessel and overview of the ship's interpretive history to highlight the eternal values and truths of humankind to be found on board a ship at sea. Maritime education further encourages the growth of reason, understanding and communication along with the maturing traits of persistence, patience, endurance, stamina, caution and courage.
One of the most important aspects of sail training is the development of a sense of judgment about what and who you can rely on, and to what degree. This sense applies to the compass, the weather forecast, the ship's crew and fellow shipmates, the depths on the chart, the strength of the anchor cable, the vigilance of the lookout on the other ship.
But foremost in acquiring your ability to be self-reliant is to learn to trust yourself and your instincts, to hone qualities you need not just to survive in today's world, but to prevail.
So why is the Lynx program so unique, so different? In addition to limiting the number of student seamen, Lynx offers an experience unparalleled by other sail training programs: the ability to travel to the past, so you can see into your future.
All of which is enhanced by adventure - not one witnessed as a bystander, but actually lived as an active participant. The Lynx experience will prove to be among the most rewarding of your life.
While you will have adequate preparation to perform your duties aboard Lynx, the modern distractions you brought with you on board will be removed to maximize your experience. You will be totally immersed in life on board ship from the moment the lines are cast off and the voyage has begun. In less than 20 minutes, you'll be hoisting sail and before the day is out, maybe reefing sail.
By stripping away familiar habits, you will be far more receptive to new routines and new encounters. It allows your experience to be real.
And when the experience is real, the lesson is real. Sometimes you may be wishing you were somewhere else. But like most things in life which are worthwhile - such as climbing mountains or running a marathon, the pain can be directly proportionate to the gain. You also discover, quite quickly, that the lessons so well planned in advance are often supplanted, to everyone's benefit, by natural events or man-made diversions.
And from these lessons will come a certain wisdom, one shared among sailors - and only a few others.
As wrote W. P. Bradley, "The Landsman might ponder with profit the Sailor's refusal to give over his ancient knowledge of the sea to a machine. We on the land have embraced the new and thrown out the old with such abandon that today many of us, disassociated from our past, face the future with foreboding. Social scientists talk of modern man's loss of identity, of selfhood, in a world dominated by the giant technological apparatus he has created yet finds alien; they find a bored, restless, aggressive, and frustrated public. For those on the land concerned with preventing such a consequence, there may be a lesson in the seaman's deliberate retention of an outmoded form of transport, the square-rigger, as a means of keeping alive his relationship with his past."
This relationship with the past is often a reaching for something beyond, for what Joseph Conrad called, "a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill."
These experiences, these "higher points," indeed prove to be the raw material of character. Such moments stress the need for teamwork and enhance the sense of community, without which a ship cannot operate to full capacity - nor, in life, can a person achieve one's full potential. This experience is found in the personal realization of the Lynx motto: "Be excellent to each other and to your ship."
And amid all these lessons and adventures and recreations of the historical past, there is one ultimate benefit of sail training on Lynx: an understanding of and an appreciation for silence. It is during the long, quiet hours aboard ship, when you hear no clatter or startling noises, that you listen only for those sounds you need to recognize for your own survival, both on the water and within your heart. In a world crowded with the din of technological advance and rapid communication, the concept of solitude may be the most lasting lesson you take with you once you disembark from the quarterdeck of Lynx.
"Be excellent to each other and to your ship" - and take the Lynx experience with you into the rest of your life.
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