The schooner Martha is leaving Aug. 23 for a year-long trip culminating in the Trans-Pacific Yacht Race in July 2015.

Martha is a historic staysail schooner, used for sail training and known for her graceful lines and speed. She often wins races with a crew made up of local students led by Captain Robert d'Arcy, 56, and his wife, Holly Kays, 50.

d'Arcy and Kays brought Martha to Port Townsend from Seattle about 12 years ago under the aegis of the Schooner Martha Foundation.

The core crew for the trip, d'Arcy said, is himself, his wife, Holly Kays; their daughter Mary, 11; and Christopher Hanke, Rosie Lund and Annie Aldrich. They'll head first to San Francisco Yacht Club, whose commodore in 1907, J.R. Hanify, had the vessel built and named after his wife, Martha Fitzmaurice Hanify.

Martha intends to sail in the Great San Francisco Schooner Cup on Sept. 6, d'Arcy said, and the crew will do a presentation on Martha's history at SFYC. They'll also do the Leukemia Cup fundraising sail on Sept. 21-22, then depart for Oxnard, California, and spend the rest of the fall sailing the Channel Islands before heading to San Diego for a stint at the San Diego Maritime Museum.

Around Thanksgiving, the plan is to sail down the outer coast of Baja California to Cabo san Lucas and up to La Paz, spending December through February in the Sea of Cortez.

It's back to San Diego for the American Schooner Cup in mid-March 2015, then up to Ventura, California, for a haulout and maintenance before returning to San Diego for the Yesteryear Regatta in mid-May.

"Then we'll hot-foot it to San Francisco," d'Arcy said, for the Master Mariners Regatta at the end of May.

"We're going to cool our jets in the Bay Area for the rest of June," d'Arcy said. Additional crew will arrive for the Transpac: Christopher Grace, Sara Katz, Pat Vineyard and Craig Johnson as navigator. They'll transit to Long Beach, California, to be in the first group of boats starting on June 13 from Point Furman for the race to Honolulu, Hawaii; d'Arcy expects to complete the race in "12-14 days," he said.

After the Transpac, they'll spend some time in the Hawaiian Islands and leave from Hanalei Bay, Kauai, to head for the Victoria Classic Boat Festival and race in late August 2015. Martha intends to be home in Port Townsend for the 2015 Wooden Boat Festival, d'Arcy said.

After next year's boat festival, Martha returns to her normal schedule of educational sails, d'Arcy said.

GET THE WORD OUT

Part of the purpose of the year-long journey, d'Arcy said, is to get the word out about Port Townsend as a mecca for marine trades excellence and as a vacation and education getaway.

For example, he said, "very few people know about opportunities for kids to take sailing classes" at the Northwest Maritime Center. Wooden boat enthusiasts tend to think of Maine before Port Townsend.

"In my experience, Rockport, Camden [Maine] people know," d'Arcy said. "Not as many know about Port Townsend."

By sailing Martha as an ambassador, he intends to change that.

"The whole point is marketing," he said. "To be an ambassador for Port Townsend."

The Port Townsend Marine Trades Association, the Port of Port Townsend, and the Northwest Maritime Center will supply informational literature for Martha's crew to hand out in their various ports of call.

"We really embrace Port Townsend as our home," d'Arcy said. "And I think the community has really embraced Martha. We appreciate the support we have received."

Martha's main purpose is sail training.

Throughout the spring and fall, Kays and d'Arcy take students from the Port Townsend School District’s OCEAN (Opportunity, Community, Experience, Academics and Navigation) program sailing in the Friday evening races on Port Townsend Bay. Kays and d’Arcy get them involved in every aspect, from reading the charts to setting the spinnaker. And they let the kids do the work, handle the lines, fit the winch handles, steer the boat.

Their daughter, Mary, is home-schooled, and her education continues on the trip.

"OCEAN teachers have provided learning materials" for Mary, d'Arcy said. "Rosie, Annie and Christopher will be included in part of her lessons" also. He said they are still working on finding someone to be the custodian of a ham radio in a PT classroom so Mary could call in and talk about her travels.

Regardless, the crew "will send emails to various people about our exploits," d'Arcy said, and "on the Transpac site you can click a tracker" to monitor Martha's position.

SAFETY GEAR

Equipping Martha for the trip has been expensive, d'Arcy said, but it's part of the mission of the Schooner Martha Foundation to market and support the maritime cultural traditions in Port Townsend. Many corporations have provided free or reduced-rate equipment, including Winslow Life Raft, Garmin, PT Rigging, PT Foundry, the Port of PT, Northwest Sails, PT Sails and the Northwest Maritime Center, which provided shop space to build a new foremast in 2012 and to repair the mainmast last winter.

The biggest piece of new equipment, he said, is a global rescue life raft.

"Not only was it expensive, it was also tough to integrate onto the boat," d'Arcy said. They also upgraded communications and crew safety equipment, adding a ham radio, Pactor email communications system and an automated information system (AIS) with a transceiver that broadcasts the boat's location, course, speed and marine information (identification) number to help avoid collisions. Crew will also wear personal AIS machines on their lifejackets; if someone falls overboard, an alarm sounds on the chart plotter and the person's location is marked automatically.

"This machine tells you exactly where they are," d'Arcy said. "These things just make good sense."

d'Arcy never formally studied engineering. "I'm kind of a napkin-sketch engineer," he said. He grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, and is a fourth-generation boatbuilder. He makes a living not with the nonprofit Schooner Martha Foundation, but with his own business, Robert d'Arcy Marine Services. He does historic vessel restoration and management, including boats such as the Katie Ford, Juna, Bout, Zodiac and the steamship Virginia V.

He explained the numerous hurdles Martha has had to clear to participate in the Transpac race, including a stability test that Martha passed with flying colors, he said.

"We kind of knew because we sail her that she's stiff," he said. "But now we mathematically know she's a very stable boat."

Keep an eye on ptleader.com for updates about Martha's race results.