News

We are grateful for being chosen! Bank Gloucester is donating a total of $25,000 to 21 local non-profit organizations and Schooner Adventure is among them. Recipients of the donations are determined by the number of votes cast during the month of September 2020. If we get the most votes we could be given $5000! Tell all your friends and family to include us in their voting! https://bankgloucester.com/ballot

Other ways you can show your support for Adventure with our partners in the community:

Purchase a Bag at Stop and Shop and Schooner Adventure receives a dollar! Our own Gloucester Stop and Shop has chosen us as their non-profit for the month of September to receive a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the reusable bags at check out in their Thatcher Road store. You can purchase bags at other Stop & Shop locations and fill in the name of Schooner Adventure on the detachable card to enable us to receive a portion of those proceeds as well. All contributions help continue important work and ensure that Adventure will live on to sail next season, fulfill her mission, and share her legacy as an inspiration for the future.
Click on the bag image below to learn more.

Don’t miss “Community Through Adventure“! Learn what we have been up to and where we are headed. Participate and share our stories to stay inspired during this time.

Your Generous Support Helped Us Reach Our Goal.
Your donations fulfilled the Board’s $30,000 match and doubled their impact. We received the $5,000 bonus too! Because of you, our first Virtual Fundraiser was a success!

The Video premiered to rave reviews on the evening of July 9th. Even though the online fundraising event wrapped up on July 20th, your support is still needed to keep Adventure strong for the future.
Continue to watch the video here.
Adventure continues to need your help. Please donate here.

Thank you to our Sponsors; You made this event possible!

Individuals:

Corporate Sponsors:

Cape Ann Savings Bank
The Building Center
Thomas Dexter, CFP- Capital Management Partners
Groom Construction
Hawkins Point Partners
Institution for Savings
Rockport Mortgage Corporation
Engel & Volkers
International Special Risks
Precision Roofing Services of N.E.

It is with heavy hearts that we announce the cancellation of the 2020 sailing season. Our Board of Directors made the difficult decision that the only way to maintain an adequately safe standard of operation is to remain alongside the dock this year. The health and safety of our students, passengers, volunteers, and crew is always our highest priority.

Since her recommissioning five years ago, Adventure has sailed many miles, visited many places, hosted many students, and filled many hearts with joy, wonder, and inspiration. She is a beloved icon of not just the history but the unique character of this place. She commemorates both triumph and tragedy. 
We honor the values of the dorymen: courage, self-sacrifice, and teamwork, among others. These values are very much in mind as we all seek to navigate an extraordinary and difficult period in our lives, a time when we treasure them even more than ever.
Each year, we look forward to the day when the preparations are complete and we can set sail to share our vessel and our mission with young and old. Crew and volunteers work throughout the Winter months to preserve and maintain Adventure. They are dedicated stewards of our National Historic Landmark, and their level of commitment is exceptional.

Board, staff, and volunteers remain hard at work preparing for the day when we can once again line up and pull together on the halyards to raise sail and soar. We are building toward 2021 and beyond as we strive to extend our vessel’s reach and impact, particularly through our educational programs. Our decision not to sail also conserves vital resources to sustain our organization as we work toward the day when we can operate fully.

Adventure will sail again! As she has done so many times in the past, she will persevere and overcome. Thanks to our extraordinary community of support, this vessel lives on to serve as a symbol of resiliency, strength, and the triumph of common purpose.

All new memberships and renewals will enjoy an extra 18 months of full benefits so that when Adventure sails again, her members may use their sail tickets and more!

Thanking the Front Line- EXTENDED!: for all memberships made by July 30, we will give a free 2021 Family Membership to an employee of the Beth Israel Lahey Health Hospital in Beverly or Gloucester. visit

Deadline extended til July 30! Join or Renew and Give a Membership to the “Watch On Deck”. We would like to invite you to join us in giving thanks to those who are devoting such extraordinary effort to our local communities.

Saluting the Watch on Deck : The “watch on deck”, as pictured in the video below, is the front line on a schooner in a storm at sea with gusts howling in the rigging and sails reefed to their minimum. They are the crew with wind and spray lashing their oilskins and braving the seas threatening to carry them overboard. endure this battle with the elements to safeguard their shipmates and a hold full of fish, both precious cargo. Adventure’s crew would like to recognize and pay tribute to front line health care workers, the “watch on deck” around the country who work around the clock to care for the sick and protect the rest of us.

Join or Renew and Give a Membership to the “Watch On Deck”

We would like to invite you to join us in giving thanks to those who are devoting such extraordinary effort to our local communities. Purchase a new membership or membership renewal that before July 30 and we will give a free 2021 membership to an employee of the Beth Israel Lahey Health Hospitals in Beverly and Gloucester.

Become a sustainer! By choosing this membership option for as little as $10 a month, you can provide a reliable source of funding for Adventure and a meaningful gift for a valued hospital employee. Please click on the button below.

Due to the restrictions on activity that have resulted from the current public health crisis we have been unable to pursue our vibrant educational programs, vessel operations, and our annual Gala and Auction, all of which are critical sources of revenue. Please consider making a donation today to help steer Adventure into the future!

Thank you to all the professional and amateur photographers who have shared their images of Schooner Adventure with us. They have captured the vessel in every season and every weather over her ninety plus years. The diversity of their keenly creative views adds greatly to the richness of the Adventure experience.

• Michael Ancevic
• Mary Barker
• Bob Barker
• George Bekris
• Mike Bergmann
• Cheryl Briscoe
• Len Burgess
• Becca Campbell
• Jane Clark
• Melissa Cox
• Tyler Fields
• Carl Gustin
• Shawn G. Henry
• Cynthia Lawry
• John Morris
• Steve Muise
• Peter Souza
• Bill Sumner
• Peter Van Demark

For centuries fishermen and sailors have gathered to sing. Whether to keep a rhythm for shipboard tasks or to express emotions of a seafarer away from home, music has been central to life at sea.

Member Peter Souza and his talented wife Audi are leaders in Adventure’s ranks. Their young daughter Zinnia pitches in as well! Recently they have been weathering the same challenges many of us have encountered, and have relied on music to carry them through.

Below Peter and Audi share several of their favorite songs. What started as a short list has turned into a Youtube channel with new songs being added almost daily! Zinnia even joins in on a few numbers. Where do these songs take you and your family members? Give a listen and let Audi, Peter and Zinnia take you sailing. Click here for all of Audi and Peter’s music videos

We asked our community to send in their favorite songs and we got some great submissions. The Souzas responded by adding performances of these classics to their repertoire; enjoy! Click on the song titles to listen.

• Beyond the Sea – Bobby Darin’s classic suggested by James Masciarelli
• Julianna – A traditional shanty (London Julies) submitted by Lee Lewis and Stan Rogers
• The Mary Ellen Carter – A favorite sent in by Duane Pontius.

Board member Bill Barton shares the connection he found with some of these songs during his extensive voyaging at sea:

Blackbird –“ I remember sailing in the turquoise Caribbean in 1974 and stopping at Bequia. At the top of the beach was an old whaleboat with pairs of oars and a place in the bow for a harpooner. The song Blackbird originated here to keep a rowing rhythm during the traditional whale hunt. Young Zinnia Souza joins her parents in a family rendition of the song.”

Yea Ho, Little Fish – “This Portuguese lullaby makes me remember the first time I heard it when watching the 1937 film of Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous. The older, wiser fisherman, Manuel, sings the song to the lad Harvey, as if offering advice on life. Hear Manuel’s versions here and here.”

Newfoundland Bound – “This is a Peter Souza solo, and written by him about his family trip to Newfoundland by ferry to visit friends and relations. It takes me back to Newfoundland and the warmth of the people in the island’s fishing outports I first visited in 1977 aboard the 1908 barkentine Regina Maris.”

One More Day – “A classic theme in sea chanteys is the yearning to be back home; some sailors used to call it “channel fever” as the ache grew stronger the closer to home, peaking in the harbor’s channel. Peter and Audi take me to times I have returned to Cape Ann waters from far away, sometimes homeward bound from Nova Scotia or out of the Atlantic past Georges Bank, over Nantucket shoals and around Cape Cod.”

Many of you know the Souzas from their performances with Three Sheets to the Wind . Did you know there’s a virtual chantey sing each Monday night in Gloucester? Email us for details and join in. Info@schooner-adventure.org

Thank you to all who wrote in with great additions to our nautical reading list! Congratulations to Naomi Logsdon of Birmingham, Alabama, pictured below. Her name was drawn to receive a complimentary copy of Adventure: The Last of the Great Doryfishing Schooners by Joseph Garland.

In an effort to provide some solace from the sea to those marooned at home, the Staff and Board of Adventure have put together a list of nautical literature. It has something for everyone, young and old, sailors, history buffs and landlubbers alike. All these books will inspire you with tales of the seven seas.
Click here for the list.

Thank you to Heather Atwood and1623 Studios for the video interview of Board member Bill Barton and Executive Director Stefan Edick about our recent Sea Reads initiative! Click on the arrow below.

A variety of members wrote in with brilliant and wonderful additions to the list. We feature those titles here in Our Supporters’ reading list. Some of the friends who wrote in with offerings are Peter Van Demark, Fran Muller, Jan Edick (father of our Executive Director), Janet Marshall and the winner of the drawing Naomi Logsdon.

Best yet, we have teamed up to support local, independent bookstores who need your business and can get these titles, new or used, to you during the stay-at-home era by mail, or in some cases curbside pick up. Two shops sell new, in print editions. Two have wonderful past editions, some nicely illustrated. We encourage you to reach out and get yourself, a family member or a friend, a nautical read to be remembered. A good book can take you to sea, even while Adventure is in port.

The Bookstore of Gloucester (new) 978-281- 1548 gloucesterbookstore@gmail.com

Dogtown Books (used) 978-281-5599 dogtownbooks@gmail.com

The Book Shop of Beverly Farms (new) 978-927-2122 info@realbookshop.com

Manchester by the Book (used) 978-525-2929 manchesterbythebook@gmail.com

Suggest your own book!

Email us back with the titles of your favorite nautical books; info@schooner-adventure.org. In a subsequent email newsletter and here on the website, we will publish the list of books submitted by members and friends! And if you do submit a title, you will be entered in a drawing for a copy of Adventure: The Last of the Great Dory-Fishing Schooners by Joseph Garland.