Arista Holden
Arista grew up sailing in various traditional boats on Penobscot Bay. She is a longtime seamanship instructor for adult and youth programs, including Outward Bound, the National Outdoor Leadership school, Atlantic Challenge Team USA, the Nova Scotia Sea School, the Viking boat replica POLARIS, and WoodenBoat School. A student of languages, culture, and craft, she has traveled, sailed, taught, and studied all over the world—most recently in a 40-foot square-rigged Norwegian boat—a fembøring—that sailed 800 miles along the western Norwegian coast to the Lofoten Islands. She holds a 50-ton U.S. Coast Guard master’s license.
Queene Hooper Foster
Queene has owned and sailed her own classic wooden sailboat for more than 40 years. She was the first woman to skipper her boat in the Newport-Bermuda Race, and has since enjoyed eight additional Gulf Stream crossings—including one in December. For the AMERICA’s Cup Jubilee in 2001, she sailed her 51’ wooden ketch, SAPHAEDRA, across the Atlantic Ocean to Cowes, England, to compete for the New York Yacht Club. The Aage Nielsen-designed SAPHAEDRA is very similar to ELSKOV, and was Queene’s summer home for 18 years; she raised her family on board, and cruised the coastal waters from New York to Eastport, Maine. She has been a Sailing Instructor for 14 years—for the past nine of them as an instructor at WoodenBoat School in her 39’ Concordia yawl, MISTY. Queene has a 100-ton Near-Coastal License (with Sail Endorsement) and is known not only as an experienced captain of classic sailing yachts, but a yachting scholar and a patient teacher of traditional sailing skills. She lives in Sedgwick, Maine.
Mark Jackson
A native Kansan, Mark was introduced to salt water sailing in the mid 1980s when he moved aboard a borrowed 30' sloop with his young family for a year of cruising the eastern seaboard. He then moved to Maine to teach sailing out of Bucks Harbor at the head of Penobscot Bay, worked at Brooklin Boat Yard, and eventually settled on Greens Island at the mouth of Penobscot Bay. As a high-school shop teacher on the island of Vinalhaven, Mark rebuilt a 30' sloop and sailed it to Florida and back with his students. He now conducts tours around the Fox Islands in his Pulsifer Hampton boat (vinalhavenbyboat.com). Most recently, he and his wife sailed their 32' foot double-ender around the Bahamas and back to Maine over an eight-month period. Mark holds a 50-ton U. S. Coast Guard Masters license.
Nakomis Nelson
Nakomis was born and raised on Islesboro, an Island in Penobscot Bay. For the past two decades, he has sailed from Newfoundland to Honduras as a professional yacht captain and crew, but the coast of Maine has always been his home. Educated in physical oceanography and environmental economics, Nakomis is deeply interested in the history and future of Maine’s coastal communities. He is also and avid photographer, organic gardener, and skier. He still lives on Islesboro, now with his wife, their son, some chickens, two cats, a dog, and an ever-evolving fleet of wooden boats. He holds a 100-ton Near Coastal license (with sail endorsement) to operate vessels up to 200 miles offshore.