Discover Maine’s rugged and remote coastline by sea kayak and traditional sailing boat and discover your strengths as both a leader and team member in this unique maritime expeditionary program.
Maine Sea Kayaking and Sailing courses are a perfect way to build your maritime expeditionary travel skills. While in a sea kayak, you will build the basic skills of travel, planning, leadership, navigation and weather observation while traveling between remote islands and wild peninsulas. You will then transition to traveling and living aboard the traditional 30-foot sailing boats that are uniquely built and designed to develop teamwork and leadership skills. Each day you will learn the skills necessary to safely traverse the rugged Maine coast, and at night you will sleep under tarps or in tents, developing backcountry cooking and campcraft practices. Sharing your goals and concerns, your group will work as a team to plan each day’s activities and choose an appropriate itinerary based on the conditions of the day. The skills and practices learned on these expeditions will serve you for life, whatever challenges lie ahead.
NOTE: For the health and safety of students and staff in the COVID-19 pandemic, students may be required to travel to course start by private transportation. Please work directly with your Course Advisor for your course for the most up-to-date and regionally-focused travel options. All students and staff must provide a current negative COVID-19 viral test result before arrival to course and/or consent to having a COVID-19 test administered at course start. Outward Bound requires students and staff to follow COVID-19 protocols for 14 days prior to course start and while traveling including physical distancing, wearing a mask in public, and frequent and thorough handwashing.For complete “Health and Safety Practices for Outward Bound Expeditions,” click here.
This course starts within the next week. Please call us at 866-467-7651 to assess the possibility of applying for this course!
Classic Courses
Are you ready to take a journey that will change your life? You won’t look at day-to-day drama the same way after you’ve summited a high mountain ridge, or slept under the stars watching bats swoop overhead. Joining an Outward Bound expedition changes you. Your crew, your Instructor, your route and your adventures will have a profound and lasting impact on you as you rise to meet exhilarating natural challenges in some of the country’s wildest places.
Build skills, form connections:Learn and practice wilderness, teamwork and leadership skills. Find connections with your crewmates based on support and respect (and fun too!), and in the thick of challenges, discover there is more in you than you know.
Value strengths and strengthen values: Uncover your unique character strengths, develop your leadership abilities and learn how to let compassion in to everyday life by pushing your own limits and working alongside your peers.
Demonstrate mastery:As you gain confidence in new skills, take on more decision-making responsibilities. Work together to achieve team goals, solve problems and succeed both as individuals and as a group. At the end of course, you and your crew will undergo a Final Challenge Event.
What you’ll learn:
For Middle School students, heading away from home means taking on new responsibilities and expectations with crewmates who are strangers when you first meet and trusted teammates by the end of your expedition. It’s all about confidence.
For High School students, the opportunities to carry more weight (literally and figuratively) and make impactful decisions with accompanying consequences fills the expedition as you go through numerous trials and triumphs. It’s all about independence.
After you come home, many of the character, leadership and service traits you uncovered on your expedition stay with you, helping you navigate your daily life with more resilience and success.
Photo courtesy
of Luke O'Neill
Photo courtesy
of Luke O'Neill
Sea Kayaking
Sea kayaks are an intimate and accessible means of traveling the coast, creating opportunities for both independent skill development and teamwork. Students will have the opportunity to paddle both single and double-kayaks, learning the techniques necessary to handle each craft. At night, students will sleep in tents on islands and the mainland in private areas, many of which are part of the Maine Island Trail network. To live well in the wilderness, all crew members must share the chores that turn a camp into a home, including setting up tents and tarps, creating a kitchen area, taking turns fetching water and cooking satisfying meals. These learned and practiced skills transfer to both the next section of the expedition, and to life back at home.
On the sea kayaking section, students will learn to:
Navigate and plan routes using charts, compass and other navigation materials
Understand the impact of weather, tides and currents on both navigation and travel
Pack, unpack and manage a sea kayak, which contains both personal and group gear
Maneuver and propel a sea kayak using paddles and foot rudders
Camp in rugged wilderness maritime environments
Practice Leave No Trace ethics
Be a part of an expeditionary team including: campsite management and upkeep, kayak and gear management on shore, food preparation and cooking, cleanup, maintenance and repair of gear.
Sailing
Traditional 30-foot sailboats encourage teamwork and leadership like no other classroom. On an open boat with no cabin and no engine, the group will live closely together using only wind and oars to power their way. As they rotate responsibilities during this expedition, students learn the crafts of maneuvering under sail, coastal navigation, rowing and living aboard a small open boat. At night, students sleep on deck under a tarp, taking turns at anchor watch under brilliant night skies.
On this course, students:
Learn to navigate using a map or a chart and a compass to arrive accurately at the day’s destination over mountains and across open water
Adjust sails properly for sailing at different angles to the wind, and execute sailing maneuvers like tacking and gybing, which turn the boat through the wind
Move the boat under oar power, coordinating all the rowers' movements so that the oars splash as one, precisely maneuvering in and out of secluded anchorages
Set a pace of hiking that covers each day’s miles and gets everyone through together, an integral part of the team
Live (cook, eat, sleep, work and learn) with the group in the backcountry, contributing energy and ideas, sharing tasks and responsibilities and relying on each other
Photo courtesy
of Amber Bolduc
Photo courtesy
of Amber Bolduc
Rock Climbing
The mighty crags and rock faces of Maine and New Hampshire are a wonderful place to learn how to rock climb. Students learn to use climbing equipment, tie knots, climb and belay each other, while Instructors provide overall supervision of the site. Climbing hones and develops balance, coordination, flexibility, and grace on the rock and presents many individual challenges for students, while the team must work together to set systems up, communicate clearly and support each other throughout the climb.
Service
Service projects are often incorporated into Outward Bound courses through coordination with local land managers, conservation groups, government or social service agencies. While on expedition, students are encouraged to practice service to the environment and their team by sharing responsibilities and following Leave No Trace ethics throughout the course.
Solo
The Solo experience provides an important break from the rigors of the expedition and gives students the opportunity to reflect on their Outward Bound experience. With sufficient food and equipment, students will set up camp at sites of their own, using the wilderness skills learned during the first half or two-thirds of the course. The time students spend on Solo depends on the length of the course, and will likely be one or two nights on this course, depending on various factors including weather, location and crew readiness.
Campsites are chosen to offer as much solitude as possible (yet be within emergency whistle-signaling distance of other group members). Most students spend their solo time journaling, drawing or just thinking and resting as they process lessons of the course to focus on their goals for the future. Instructors check on each participant at least daily and are within whistle-distance at all times.
Outcomes
Students return from their Outward Bound journey often ready to fully participate and positively engage at home, school and work, on teams, and in their communities. An age-based curriculum and course length help to adapt the Outward Bound program to meet the needs of each developmental stage. Our Instructors work with each group to make sure that the balance of challenge and success matches the group's level of ability as much as they can, and they expect the students to work with them to do so. While every course provides significant learning opportunities and high-impact outcomes, students are encouraged to select the longest course that fits their schedule because the successes, rewards, learnings, and memories will be greatest.
Photo courtesy
of Luke O'Neill
Course Area
The coast of Maine, with its intricate and indented shoreline, is a unique segment of the North Atlantic seaboard. It is known among ocean travelers for its picturesque beauty, iconic lighthouses, abundant bays and harbors, rocky islands and quiet coves. Expeditions occur in an area that covers roughly 200 miles of the Maine coast – with countless rivers, bays and islands to explore.
The rocky, spruce-covered islands are the summits of a prehistoric mountain range, and generations of inhabitants have made their livelihoods here. Evidence left behind on the islands reveals the historic presence of indigenous Abenaki camps, pre-colonial fishing communities, post-colonial timber and farming operations and early 20th century granite quarries. Cold, nutrient-rich waters flow from the Canadian Maritimes and make the Gulf of Maine home to a wide range of sea birds, seals, porpoises and whales.
These regions are the ancestral lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which includes Abenaki/Abénaquis, W∂last∂kwiyik (Maliseet), Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy nations.
SAMPLE ITINERARY
DAY 1
Travel to course, welcome, equipment issue and check, introduction to Maine coast
DAY 2
Orientation and paddle school
DAY 3-10
Sea kayaking expedition with a service day
DAY 11
Arrive at basecamp – transition to the sailing expedition
DAY 12-16
Sailing expedition
DAY 17-18
Rock climbing & Solo
DAY 19-20
Final sailing expedition
DAY 21
Return to basecamp, Personal Challenge Event, equipment clean-up and de-issue
If you are ready to enroll on a course click the enroll button next to the course you wish to select or you can enroll over the phone by speaking with one of our Admissions Advisors (toll-free) at 866-467-7651.
To secure your spot on a course you must submit an enrollment form and $500 deposit that is applied toward the total cost of the course and includes a $150 non-refundable enrollment processing fee.