Sailing Through the School of Experience

A quarter-turn to port on the ship’s wheel, and long seconds pass before the rudder position indicator ticks away from zero.

In the engine room nearly a football field behind, your slight motion has just applied about 6 million inch-pounds of hydraulic torque against a giant steel blade nearly three stories underwater.

We are somewhere off the Central California coast, a few hours past midnight. The ship’s log will later describe the harsh conditions outside as “Force 7.”

A downward crash of the bow slices through cresting 10-foot waves, casting drenching sheets of spray nearly seven stories high. The wind, blasting over the deck at 60 mph, tosses the spray against the bridge windows with a slap.

Inside the bridge, sealed behind armor-plated bulkheads and bolted-tight glass, it is as quiet as a library. The crew works in the dark, visible only as silhouettes against the red glow of night-vision instruments and the silvery luminescence of moonlit windows. About the only sensations from the elements outside are in the calf muscles that brace against a gently rising and falling floor.

Keeping this sluggish brute on course is a battle. It steers like a drunk-driving simulator. First you turn and wait for a response. Then you try to straighten out, but 11,000 tons of momentum keeps turning. Digital compass headings count down to, and then past, the intended course. Too far. Now the helm is turned back to starboard. Once again, 30 feet beneath the stormy waves, Golden Bear’s 10-ton steering flap is flexed against the sea.

Now this is an education.

Steering the Training Ship Golden Bear to exotic ports all over the world is now a lesson offered by the California State University.

From 1929 until two years ago, the Golden Bear and its three similarly named predecessor ships made up the California Maritime Academy, the only such institution on the West Coast, and one of six in the nation.

Then, in 1995, Cal State adopted this former Navy vessel and its 67-acre port in Vallejo as the newest campus in the state university system.

In academia, it was something like a conglomerate takeover of a struggling and perhaps outdated industry.

Technological and economic changes have shrunk the U.S. shipping industry dramatically, dropping it from a fleet of nearly 5,000 ships at its mid-century peak to just over 300.

Maintaining the merchant fleet serves a defense purpose: The Maritime Academy’s licensed merchant marine graduates have been a vital component of the nation’s strategy in wartime. Because of that, the U.S. Maritime Administration owns and maintains the $120-million Golden Bear for the exclusive use of the California academy.

But even with the federal government picking up that cost, this school, with just 368 students, sticks out on budget charts as the tiniest and--per capita--most expensive campus in the state university system.

It is also something of an odd duck for the system, for it remains a quasi-military school. Students are called cadets. They wear khaki uniforms, fall in each morning for a kind of daily reveille, are subject to random drug tests, and are issued demerits for inappropriate--if sometimes common--college-age behavior.

Some state legislators consider the academy to be a World War II relic. And just when the future seemed most bleak a few years ago, a sex-oriented hazing scandal nearly closed its doors for good.

Perhaps what has saved the school so far is its reputation for producing some of the nation’s highest-caliber sailors.

Despite that reputation, though, Cal State officials admit this is still an experiment. The question is whether the academy will be forced to become a traditional Cal State campus with a small maritime program, or whether it can hold onto one of the most unusual educational experiences offered by a California public school.

Perhaps the most powerful booster for preservation of the academy experience has been Barry Munitz, outgoing chancellor of the Cal State system.

“I think it would be a mistake to lose the specialness,” he said. “I would not want to end something there just because it is not done anywhere else. This is what makes the experimentation so wonderful. I like watching the commitment. I like having the alternate style.”

Something else helps the school’s prospects as well: Despite a competitive job market, every one of the academy’s 1996 licensed graduates received a job offer last year, with an average salary of $43,000 per year.

Learning by Doing--and Making Mistakes

Steaming slowly into Santa Barbara one recent sunny afternoon, the Golden Bear passed like a cautious giant through a lazy fleet of pleasure boats. There are no brakes here. Even at this speed, it would take about five minutes to stop with the engines in full reverse. So this is a kind of high-alert skating exercise.

Cadets are posted with binoculars aimed at every quarter. An extra lookout with a two-way radio is sent to the tip of the bow. Another cadet watches the sweep of a radar screen, calling out targets. Down in the engine room, an officer is standing by on the rudder’s hydraulic machinery just in case an untimely breakdown requires an emergency manual control.

“Port 10,” orders Capt. John M. Keever to the cadet at the helm. His voice is steady, more like a request than a demand. In 23 years as an instructor at his own alma mater, Keever has learned the silent patience it takes to command a ship of trainees. “Everything happens more slowly,” he says. “Every year, you watch the same mistakes made over and over.”

Keever can usually see the mistakes coming well before they are realized by the student. As long as they don’t jeopardize the ship, he indulges the error. It is one of the best teaching tools he has. Sometimes it means delays. And sometimes it means a zigzag course that causes other ships in the area to steer well clear. But then, this is a sort of driver-ed class.

There was only one serious mistake during Golden Bear’s recent two-month cruise in the South Pacific.

Arriving in a tropical cove at tiny Easter Island, home of the mysterious moai statues, a cadet lost control of the anchor as he was trying to lower it gently. By the time he applied the brake he was supposed to be monitoring, the heavy chain was pouring into the water so fast it couldn’t be stopped. Soon, sparks were flying up from the deck and a powdery rust rose into the air.

For minutes, the whole ship rumbled as 900 feet of steel chain was dragged across the deck and into the water. Then silence. As it is made to do, the last link broke cleanly free and 27 tons of federal property landed forever on the ocean bottom.

From then on, the ship operated with a noticeable list to port because there was nothing left to balance its remaining anchor. But the episode was taken in stride. U.S. maritime authorities said a replacement would be found in the mothball fleet back home. And students marked the event by drawing pictures of the missing anchor on milk cartons under the phrase: “Have you seen . . . “

Now, as we are coming into Santa Barbara, the helm is under the control of 18-year-old Eryn Dinyovszky, just a few months out of her small-town high school in New Jersey and one of 31 women among the crew of 221 cadets.

“Port 10, aye,” she says, acknowledging the captain’s order.

It doesn’t show, but Dinyovszky later admits that it was a bit scary to steer the ship straight at a harbor city. She also expects to cherish the thrill for the rest of her life.

Barely an hour later, she is working as a janitor, roaming the ship to empty trash cans into a paper sack. At this school, a student’s daily routine will eventually include almost every job on board. At the same time, her friends are lining up for the shuttle boat ride to a long-awaited night on the town.

What kind of education is this, she is asked, where you go to college to learn how to take out garbage?

But Dinyovszky’s enthusiasm is bulletproof. If she had any doubts before, this trip has confirmed her highest hopes for a career at sea. It has also instilled a dream of the future in which she is a respected commander roaming a global neighborhood. So what if she has to take out the garbage?

“You look at our school and you see 100% job placement and you think, why isn’t everybody here?” she said. “There are people coming out of [UC] Santa Barbara with communications degrees that they might as well plaster on the bottom of their waitressing tray.”

In the last three weeks, most of those aboard have stepped on shore only once. During the whole trip there have been only nine port calls, some lasting less than a day. They were nice places.

Acapulco was first, then Peru, Chile, Robinson Crusoe Island, Easter Island, Mexico again and then three California ports. But this is a 500-foot-long ship carrying 241 people. It feels small in just two days. It feels real small after two months.

Tonight, the captain has granted liberty in Santa Barbara from 6 p.m. until 1 a.m. By 5:30, a line of nearly 100 freshly showered and perfumed cadets stretches out to the quarterdeck.

One lifeboat is deployed to ferry the landing parties on a 20-minute ride from our offshore anchorage. It is quickly packed with nearly 50 high-spirited cadets who join a chorus of “The Star Spangled Banner” in mid-channel.

Alcohol or drunkenness are not tolerated on ship for anyone. But there are no school police on shore. An amusing pastime is watching the returning shuttle boats unload onto a shaky gangway. A few cadets didn’t make it back in time. They called the ship about 2 a.m. and were told to find a comfortable bench for the night. The next shore boat was at 0600.

That next morning, Dinyovszky leans on a railing above the fantail, a sort of steel-deck courtyard in the stern that has become a sun-baked hangout for off-duty students. In two days the students will be home, and some cadets are already collecting summer addresses and posing for farewell snapshots.

Dinyovszky is too wired on coffee to sleep now, but at 8:30 in the morning, that’s where she’s headed.

Instead of sleeping the night before, she decided on a late and brief trip into Santa Barbara. When she got back, she had rested barely an hour before the alarm went off about 3:30 a.m. It was her turn to stand watch in the engine room. The engine was not running. But such positions on ship are staffed around the clock anyway. Now, just off duty, she is already wearing pajamas beneath the grease-smeared coveralls that have an oily odor.

“I want to be captain of a ship,” she said, beaming. “It’s in my blood. This trip definitely confirmed all my ideas that I want to go to sea.”

Maritime Training Has Many Uses

Such dreams are easy to conjure here. In reality, only a select few will ever captain a large ship, says Capt. Keever.

Many will work in harbor towns on tugboats, tour boats or ferries. Others will work onshore in marine-related businesses.

Each student graduates with a Coast Guard license to operate almost any vessel afloat, but fewer than half will move directly to jobs at sea. Of those, just a fraction will still be there after two years.

History shows that the technical expertise taught at the Maritime Academy, especially for mechanical engineering students, is easily transferred to a variety of careers on land. But that fact has led to a lot of introspection among school administrators.

The campus is already expanding its curriculum and, for the first time, seeking to expand the student body with youths who have no intention of careers at sea. This year, the academy began offering an engineering degree that did not require a mariner’s license. More such options are expected.

In another attempt to better utilize the academy, other state universities are now being offered access to the Golden Bear. This cruise included about a dozen oceanography students and one instructor from San Luis Obispo.

“We are going to build on the stronger programs that we have,” Keever said. “We are not going to start offering English degrees, I don’t think, right away.”

The academic realignment is reflective of an industry that has also undergone dramatic upheaval in recent decades--particularly in this country.

One problem is that U.S. crews are the most expensive in the world, and American safety laws require large staffs. A general cargo ship operated under U.S. registration needs a crew of 34 at a daily cost of about $13,300. A similar ships--often owned by a U.S. company but registered overseas--can operate with a crew of 24 and a daily cost as low as $1,400, according to the federal Maritime Administration.

To protect the U.S. fleet, federal law requires that ships traveling between two American ports must be registered in the United States. Still, 96% of the world’s shipping is now done in foreign-flagged vessels, compared to about 60% just after World War II.

At the same time, technology has eliminated many seagoing jobs.

“Today, one large container ship carries as much cargo between Japan and the U.S. as 50 World War II-size ships,” Keever said.

“The good news is that it used to cost $5 to ship the tennis shoe that was made in Indonesia for $2. It now costs 20 cents to get the shoes here.”

By the time they leave the maritime academy, cadets are well aware of such realities. They are required to make three trips to sea before graduation--two on the Golden Bear and one as an intern on a commercial vessel.

As Midshipman 1st Class David Cobb explained: “When I first heard about the school, I heard about a 99% job [placement] rate. Then it was downhill after that.”

Those who have experienced the California Maritime Academy, however, say the most valuable lessons are the intangibles. It is an education to read about engine mechanics in a textbook; it is a life-changing experience, they say, to be made responsible for running that engine. Maybe out of fear and maybe from newfound pride, it snaps a youngster into maturity. Keever and the academy instructors have seen it over and over.

“If a parent sends their kid to this school, when they get back from that first cruise they will see more change than at any time in their lives,” Keever said. “There is more maturity and more self-confidence.”

Especially for those who work hard, the school has also provided a bigger payoff than most campuses. Those in the top of the class will graduate as third mates on ocean freighters, where they can make more than $70,000 for six months of work. Several, like Kyle Hamill, scattered to ports all over the world within weeks of their graduation.

Hamill, a 23-year-old from Ventura who used to scrub sportfishing boats in exchange for free rides, headed to the Middle East this summer for a job on an offshore oil rig. Another graduate will work in Indonesia for the same company. For both, the starting pay was $52,000 a year with a $2,400 allowance for every two weeks spent on shore.

Hamill planned to travel through Europe on his allowance and bank the rest. Like most mariners, he was quickly learning investment strategies because there is no place to spend your money on a ship.

Cadet Bruce Koppel, who was piloting tour boats in Hawaii before coming to the academy, was already hoping to retire young. In the meantime, with plenty of money and up to two months off at a time, he was planning to travel the globe and live at the world’s best surfing spots.

“I want to surf,” he said. “The whole reason I came here was the time off. Two months on, two months off. In a few years, get $66,000 a year for six months’ work. In 15 years, I’m ready to retire.”