Federal Funding Now Available for Maritime Training Centers
Are you having trouble finding help to get your boat repaired? Help may be on the way. The US Department of Transportation has recently announced federal funding for schools teaching the marine trades and for those seeking maritime careers.
When your avocation becomes your vocation, do you ever get a vacation? Or do you ever go to work? Many in the maritime trades fell in love with boats and sailing at a young age and could never let it go. So the question is, if your work and play life revolve around what you love, do you never get a day off? Or, if you do what you love, does your work always feel like play?
Either way the maritime trades are a great career choice, whether working in a boatyard, making sails, or crewing on a tugboat, ferry boat or container ship. USDOT MARAD (Maritime Administration) is offering funding to community or technical colleges and maritime training centers to help prepare Americans for maritime careers.
This is important because many of our readers are waiting with long lead times for repairs, and so many of our Latitude 38 advertisers are running help-wanted ads in the Job Opportunities section of our Classifieds (including us). There are also many of our friends who are happy with their maritime careers. Moe Roddy recently interviewed sailor and Cal Maritime graduate Anne McIntyre for our Good Jibes podcast, in which Anne talks about her career as business director of the San Francisco Bar Pilots. It’s one of many rewarding pathways for career sailors.
The funding is another silver lining of the pandemic, which highlighted the vulnerabilities of our national supply chain. It’s hard to get ships unloaded in Long Beach and hard to find mechanics to fix your marine refrigeration or repair your diesel auxiliary. We know schools such as Cal Maritime, Spaulding Marine Center, Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship in Newport Beach and Training Resources Maritime Institute in San Diego all have great programs available for those looking at maritime careers. We’re sure there are many more.
If you’re a school looking for federal funding for your maritime training center, you should contact Gerard Wall, Centers of Excellence Program Manager, at [email protected] or (202) 366-7273. There is a deadline of September 19th.
You can also send your application to this easy-to-remember address: US Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration, Deputy Associate Administrator for Maritime Education and Training, Attention: CoE Designation Program, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590. Applications are due by 8:00 p.m. EST on September 19, 2022. Or email to: [email protected].