Unicorn Takes Sail

Written by Mary Flanagan Wednesday, July 06 2011

Snapshot Dawn Santamaria

Tall Ship Unicorn under sail

BLACK ROCK, Conn.– Sisters Under Sail is a unique leadership and empowerment program for teenage girls and women. The program takes place at sea on board the 110-foot working tall ship Unicorn. The women and girls do all of the work, using their wits and pure muscle.

Founded and run by Dawn Santamaria, Sisters Under Sail has put almost 400 girls and 200 women from all over the country and Canada at the helm since its inception in 2005. This summer, 60 students and 24 women each will spend a week sailing the Unicorn. Sisters Under Sail is a nonprofit organization, and almost half the girls are sponsored by community and corporate partners as well as individual donors.

The Unicorn, the only tall ship in the world with an all-female crew, is a beautiful two-masted, square topsail, gaff-rigged schooner. Her mast soars 96 feet above the deck, and she has 9,688 square feet of sail.


Womenetics: Why is it called the Unicorn?
Dawn Santamaria: The boat was originally built in 1947 in the Netherlands from salvaged German submarine steel. At the end of World War II, the Dutch had no industry. They seized the German U2 vessels that were left on their shores, recycled everything, and built an entire fleet of fishing trawlers. This boat was originally a fishing boat and not a sailing ship. For 30 years, it worked the North Sea under the name Deo Volente I. In the 1970s a Dutch family from Hoorn, a village in North Holland, bought it and converted it into a schooner, adding a mast and lots of concrete for ballast. They renamed it the Eenhoorn, which means “one horn” or “unicorn” in Dutch. When a British guy bought the boat from them, he anglicized the name to Unicorn. The ship has had several owners since that point. My husband, Jay, and I bought it in Canada 12 years ago.

Deo Volente I (1947)

Womenetics: What was it like to buy a tall ship?
Santamaria: Truthfully, I didn't even know what a tall ship was at the time. Jay's the sailor, and I consider myself to be an extremely nice wife. When he said that this was his dream, his passion, I was like, OK I better get on the internet and figure out how to sail and what a tall ship is.

We had a 38-foot ketch, which we sailed in Long Island Sound, but Jay was the one always at the helm. I was in the galley making drinks and sandwiches. I always loved sailing, but I am not the sailor. To this day, I have a full crew that does everything. I remember my exact words to Jay: “If you think we can handle it, then OK.”

As soon as we signed the papers we both realized that we couldn't handle this. The ship needs to work, and we were not thinking about retiring. We were still raising a family. My four daughters were little at the time (eighth, sixth, first grade, and a newborn), but we stuck with it and had a management company run the business out of Canada.

Womenetics: How did Sisters Under Sail come about?
Santamaria: In 2003, we did a major refit in Nova Scotia and spent a ton of money. Then I realized that this was no longer a hobby and that the Unicorn needed a mission. Since my husband runs a business in Manhattan, we knew he wasn't able to run the boat business. I was the one who was going to have to run it. Besides, he never to this day says “no” to the boat, and I have no problem saying “no” to the boat. We knew that it was something I was going to have to run, but I needed to find something I could get passionate about.

By this time, our daughters were heading off to college, and they had so much more confidence than I ever had when I was their age. They could work a room -- it didn't matter if they were speaking with children or executives or seniors. We had been doing deck tours around the country and Canada, welcoming thousands of community members to view the ship. So, when we looked at our kids, we knew we had something special and cool that we could offer.

Tall Ship Unicorn in Black Rock

I didn't have to go find Sisters Under Sail; it found me. I knew what it was that I could get excited about because I had seen it in our own family. There was nothing like Sisters Under Sail in the marketplace; this niche wasn't being served. I'm not an overprotective mother by any means, but I also would not consider putting my daughter out at sea in a vessel that was not somewhat supervised and the experience a wholesome one.

At first, I had a lot of naysayers in the business. They, especially the men, didn't take us too seriously, but we have stuck with it and we are one of the strongest programming boats on the water right now. We sail as the only all-female crewed tall ship in the world, running this novel leadership program for girls. Our average age participant is 16 years old, which I love because those girls are sophomores and juniors in high school. There is not a lot of cool stuff out there that a high school girl wants to do that is still a single-sex experience. She comes here and is completely empowered by the all-female experience. She builds her confidence and self-esteem. And there aren't any little boys around to distract them from what they are doing.

Womenetics: What do the girls do on deck?
Santamaria: Each week six new students from all over the country join the ship. We stay at sea from Monday until we dock at the next port on Friday. None of the girls is forced to do an activity that she is not comfortable with, but all of them are presented with the opportunities. For example, we have climbing the rigging. It's not so much that the rigging needs to be tended. Realistically, my crew would be the ones who would do the necessary tending. It's about facing new challenges and risks and going beyond your comfort zone.

We get the girls to take the helm because we want them to feel the awesome responsibility for everyone else on deck. It's one thing to stand here while the captain is at the helm. It's another to get a feel for the ship and how it responds to the turn at the wheel. It just takes on a different perspective for them regarding leadership and responsibility.

They also learn the importance of communication -- in real life and on the boat. On a tall ship nothing is done hydraulically. Everything's done by pure muscle, and the girls have to leverage their strength together in order to raise the sails. So, instead of having one guy on each side, we will have three gals on the starboard side and three gals on the port side to raise the sails. An officer will be on the quarterdeck, watching them and issuing a whole set of commands to have the sails lifted as a whole.

Dawn Santamaria and her daughter

Those are simple things that we extract from the boat. I don't expect the girls to leave the boat and be proficient sailors. You can't do that in a week. We just give them a flavor of what it is like to have their world rocked and look at it from a different perspective.

If you are interested in learning more, Amy, one of our deck hands, will be posting a blog on the Tall Ship Unicorn website this summer.

Womenetics: How many women crew on the ship?
Santamaria: This summer we will have a professional crew of seven women: a skipper, first and second mate, two deck hands, a cook, and a facilitator, who is on board to teach the leadership curriculum for the girls. From the start, I have been determined to fill all the positions on the ship with women. It just didn't seem to be just right to have a male captain and first mate, the key leadership roles in a ship, when you are teaching an empowerment program.

Having an all-female crew, we have been building a reputation in the industry. What we have been able to do, and again this was a dream of mine, is to create a consortium of sorts of women who want a land life as well as a life at sea. The difficulty for women who are professional mariners is that there is no one at home creating a home, and they want that. They want families. They want children.

For example, my primary skipper this year, Captain Rose, has her 500-ton master of oceans license, 30 years of maritime experience, and an 8-year-old daughter. She will be on board for six weeks and then relief captains will take her place when she goes back on shore with her family. Furthermore, the other two captains also have daughters, and I have invited them all to sail with their mothers this year. The captain's quarters has an extra berth.

Womenetics: When can we “older girls” come on board?
Santamaria: Our women's program is our bookend business -- before and after summer vacation, when the kids are in school.

Climbing the rigging

A lot of the women who sign up are sailors, but that's certainly not required. All the women get the chance to climb the rigging and stand watch with my crew. They do everything from navigation to taking the helm at night. I find that as women get older, we tend to lose our playfulness and youthfulness, and yet we still hunger for those girl opportunities for ourselves.

These gals get on board, and they have a riot. It shakes their world. It takes them out of their comfort zone. They share tight quarters down below: the six bunks stacked in the fo'c's’le. They have to adjust to ship's life, and they do.

I think the oldest gal we've had was 63 and the youngest women were a couple of college girls who got out of school in May and our schedule worked for them. I can take on board a woman of any age as long as she is healthy and agile.

Womenetics: Where do you sail?
Santamaria: In 2010 we started from here, Black Rock Harbor in Connecticut, on May 23, and sailed north to Canada. We had nine tall ship festivals last year in the Great Lakes. It was a very busy summer for us. This year we are sailing to New York and Massachusetts then back again to Connecticut for the winter.
Next year our nation will be celebrating OpSail 2012: the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, the birth of the Navy, and the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. There will be a large naval presence up and down the east coast from Norfolk to Boston. We will hopefully be participating with our students as the only all-female crewed tall ship in the world.

Dawn Santamaria

Womenetics: How can I sign up?
Santamaria: About 45 percent of the kids we put on board are girls who have financial difficulties. They are not at-risk youths – other than financial risk. These girls are making great choices for themselves, making good grades, but lacking the financial ability to afford the opportunities. So, we go out to the marketplace and find funding for sponsorships for them. We put them on board first, and then whatever berths we have left during the season, we cast that out on the worldwide web. The girls and women come from all over the country and Canada. And we sell out.

Everything is booked up this year for the woman's programming, but I just had one cancellation this morning: A spot is open on the very last week. As for the girl's program, I think we only have two openings, and again one of them was from a cancellation.

If anyone is interested in sponsoring a girl or signing up a student or herself, I suggest she take a look at our website, and she can always contact me. The nice thing about our office is that when you call or send an email, it's me who answers. Parents, in particular, appreciate that the boat owner and the founder of the program is right here, very accessible, and very much involved with her own boat, making sure it is going well. It's hard work, but I am proud of our success.

The writing on the back of our T-shirts sums it up: “This ain't no cruise, sister. It's the adventure of a lifetime.”

Mary Flanagan was born in Fairfield, Conn., and has a degree in archeology from the University of Arizona. She has been working as a journalist, editor, and translator in Amsterdam, Holland, for the past 20 years. Most recently she has translated two historical novels by Dutch author Ivo Knottnerus, The Life of the Renaissance Painter Paolo Veronese and Saint Helena's Pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem, which have just been published as e-books via Amazon.com.