For the first time ever, Maine Maritime Academy will have a new, purpose-built training ship for its cadets when the vessel arrives in Castine later this year.
The new ship won’t just mean improved training for MMA students as they learn about marine shipping trades and related disciplines. It also will mean changes for the local harbor and for boaters who come and go from the town’s waterfront.
The new $320 million ship, which is currently being built at Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia, will be roughly 24 feet longer and 16 feet wider than the academy’s training existing ship. The federal Maritime Administration will own the ship, but MMA will maintain and use the vessel for training students.
The feds are requiring MMA to rebuild the pier on Castine’s waterfront to accommodate the larger vessel, but it’s not just a matter of size. The pier has to be built to handle sea level rise, the reality of which was demonstrated by two storms last month that severely flooded and damaged waterfront infrastructure in Castine and dozens of harbors along Maine’s coast.
This means the rebuilt pier is expected to stick out into the harbor 135 feet farther from shore than the current pier, according to local officials.
“It has to be higher than the old one,” said Jerald Paul, the school’s president. “If you’re still going to keep a safe slope on the new pier as it extends out into the water, it has to stick further out to reach the required height.”
The extended pier will affect local boating traffic to and from shore, most of which comes and goes from the town’s municipal wharf, which is adjacent to where the MMA ship ties up. But town officials said they think reasonable adjustments can be made to minimize the impact.
There has been a good deal of communication between the town and MMA about the new pier’s anticipated impact, Shawn Blodgett, Castine’s town manager, said. But those impacts won’t be fully understood until the new pier is built and the new ship spends time in varying weather conditions while tied up. He said MMA has been flexible in drafting plans for the pier to try to mitigate the expected impacts.
“They have made several modifications,” Blodgett said. “They took part in multiple planning board and community meetings. We have a really close working relationship with the college.”
One thing MMA agreed to is preserving the same angle that boats use when they approach the town pier upon entering the harbor, he said. Boaters will have to maintain their bearings longer when approaching the pier, because the pier will stick out farther.
The new pier’s plans have been fully approved by the town and by state and federal agencies, the town manager said, but he expects MMA will continue to be open to suggestions from the town about possible modifications.
Blodgett and Paul each said that because the pier will stick out farther, and because the academy’s ship is in port and tied up to the pier more often than not, the new pier and ship may act together to better shelter the town pier from wind and waves than the current configuration.
Steve Vogell, the town’s harbormaster, said he expects that having the pier protrude father into the harbor will make it more difficult during outgoing tides, when the flow of the tidal river reaches 7 mph, for some sail boats to power past the end of the ship instead of getting pushed toward the shore side of the docked ship, where the pier will block them in.
The town plans to extend one of its piers farther out to help shorten the distance around the docked ship, to weaken the influence of the outgoing tide, and to make the town facilities more resilient to sea level rise, he said. But the town won’t make such improvements until the MMA project is done, so that town officials can see what the new pier’s impact is, he said.
“I don’t see it as a monumental problem,” Vogell said. “It’s manageable.”
Paul said MMA is going out to bid to find contractors to build the new pier in the next week or so, and that he expects construction to get under way by the end of March.
As for the delivery of the new ship, Paul said he hopes construction will be finished and it will be in place at the local waterfront by March or April of 2025.
