Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Saratoga native Kimiko Kato relates her adventures at sea.

Local student completes a six-week study voyage

By Tim Persyn

Twenty-year-old college student Kimiko Kato relaxed in her chair outside a coffee house in Saratoga and related a harrowing experience at sea.

She had just completed a full-credit undergraduate program offered by the Sea Education Association of Woods Hole, Mass., in which she spent six weeks with 16 other students and 10 crew members conducting oceanographic research while sailing through the Caribbean, Bahamas and the Sargasso Sea.

But somewhere around Cuba she got more than she bargained for.

"In the Yucatán Channel we had to sail through a gale, against the water, and we were immobile--we couldn't use our mainsail," Kato explained, calling to mind images from a Herman Melville novel.

"We all came together. We realized that on this boat, we are the fire department, the medics--we were the whole community."

After this experience, inconveniences like a three-hour delay on her plane flight home seemed inconsequential, she said.

What would motivate someone to spend six weeks at sea, sailing through potentially dangerous waters while conducting scientific research?

"This was my one stint in science," explained Kato, who has spent most of her college experience creating art at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. "I had a really close friend from high school who did this same cruise. She said I should check it out--she said I'd get a lot out of it."

Amid all the sailing and survival, Kato had a scientific project to carry out. She researched the population size and species variance of lantern fish at different latitudes. At the end of the trip, she turned in a research paper.

As one might guess, Kato also learned quite a bit about sailing. She said that by the end of the six weeks, the students aboard could run the 134-foot Corwith Cramer, their vessel and home for the voyage.

The trip also required a significant amount of classroom work. Kato was in class from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for six weeks before she even stepped on the boat, studying oceanography, nautical science and maritime studies. Once at sea, the students spent two and a half hours a day studying.

All the work of keeping watch, cleaning, studying and conducting research could take a toll, Kato explained.

There were moments of being wiped out," she said. "I would automatically wake up after three hours of sleep and wonder if I needed to do something."

She added that she slept between five to five and a half hours a day, and ate about six times a day. "We were so hungry," she explained.

The wisdom she gained from the experience may have had more to do with living life than with studying science. "Land life is so easy. I can handle situations a lot better," she said. "For instance, if something isn't going right, I'll look at other options."

And sailing had a thrill all its own. "Every day you feel so alive. You have to give all you have--you have to muster up all your energy," Kato said.

When Kato returns to college, she's going to stay involved in science by teaching elementary school kids about marine ecology in the Puget Sound. "It's a way to teach science and be creative," she said. She also plans to return to studying art, and to be involved with sailing again sometime in the future.

She also plans to stay in touch with some of the fellow students she met aboard the Corwith Cramer. "I made lifelong friends. It was a really tight group."