By Chrissy McLean, Career Launch Manager
For Jenna Recker-Hiegel, “persistence through discomfort” has been one a major theme in building her skills into a professional maritime career. “Living in the PNW, you have to learn how to really love sailing in order to continue doing it—the water and weather are so cold it can be really miserable sometimes.”
Jenna’s family visited Port Townsend when she was six years old. They went on a whale watching tour and had an enchanting visit with the Southern Resident Orca, Ruffles (J1). “He came right up and touched his nose to our boat. I have been in love with the sea ever since.”
Jenna’s family moved to Port Townsend soon after, and she joined Northwest Maritime summer camps. After a season as a Junior Pirate, she started Learn to Sail. She was terrified of capsizing and scared of going too fast, but she was also hooked on the excitement of sailing and kept coming back every summer through 8th grade.
She stayed involved in as many Northwest Maritime activities as she could, including the Maritime Discovery Program, Girls’ Boat Project, and volunteering at the summer camps where she first learned to sail.
Jenna was a part of the early days of Port Townsend Maritime Academy. In this high school program, Jenna was in the after-school program, Schooner School. This experience introduced her to the schooner Martha, the yawl Pacifica, and survival at sea skills—including damage control, firefighting, getting into liferafts, and swimming in exposure suits.
Also in high school, Jenna started expanding her experience with other vessels in the area. She stepped aboard the schooner Adventuress for their Girls at the Helm program, then went on to crew with the schooner Martha, racing with them in the 2018 Swiftsure.“That was a really windy and intense year,” she says. “It was scarier being below than being up on the deck doing stuff.”
Jenna was also a part of the Port Townsend High School Sailing Team, jumping into her wetsuit right after school! The team was very competitive with other teams in the region. Learning all of the rules of team sailing and the intensity of competition made her anxious.
“It was really humbling going from Learn to Sail camps to the High School Sailing Team, but that’s when I really got hooked on sailing. I loved going to the regattas.”
The following summer, Jenna joined the schooner Martha as a deckhand. “I spent more time on Martha that summer than I did on land or at home.” Her role included not only working on the deck of the 68-foot schooner but also cooking and cleaning for passengers. “I learned a lot about the difference between crew and passengers that summer.”
She returned to the High School Sailing Team that fall and participated in a couple of regattas before the COVID shutdown in February of 2020. That next summer, she started sailing with the crew of Pacifica, racing on Wednesday and Friday nights in Port Townsend Bay with everyone on deck masked up. “PTSA (Port Townsend Sailing Association) limited our crew size for proper social distancing. It was pretty strict, with only one person below deck at a time. It felt claustrophobic, and I learned how much you read people’s lips and expressions when sailing. We had to learn how to communicate differently with hand signals.”
In the summer of 2021, Jenna worked full-time as a sailing instructor at the Northwest Maritime’s Learn to Sail camps. That first summer after the pandemic, everything was tense. The boats were leaky, and they had to launch them off the beach (which is hard at low tide). It was her first summer working full-time and being on the water eight hours a day. It was tough and amazing.
After high school, Jenna attended the University of Washington and earned a BS in Psychology. While there, she joined the UW sailing team. During her summers back in Port Townsend, she worked in the Learn to Sail camps. She helped to develop new and better programs each summer and eventually became the Summer Program Coordinator.
In her quest to experience more places and build her skillset and knowledge, Jenna joined a boat delivery from Hawaii to California in the fall of 2025. As a young woman, she wanted to make sure she sailed with a captain she trusted, and she was fortunate to already know one from her time on Pacifica, which made her feel comfortable taking the job.
“The first week, I was like ‘I can’t believe I’m paid to do this; this is the coolest thing ever,’ and the second week I was like, ‘Thank God, I’m paid to do this.’ We had a lot of problems: the hydraulics on the keel broke, the old mainsail failed within the first few days, so we could only sail with a jib or motor, and we were required to do daily check-ins with the Coast Guard to make sure the transit was still safe. Going from wooden boats that are meticulously cared for and well-designed for comfort and sailing to being in a carbon fiber boat that was built on the edge to race and go fast was eye-opening. When we arrived in Santa Barbara, we had less than 10 gallons of usable fuel left.”
A few days after arriving on the West Coast, she headed back to Seattle to complete her STCW basic safety training certification. She continues to add to her skill set as she pursues more sailing opportunities. Jenna’s future sights are set on exploring the world of sailing, both in the PNW and around the world.
“Even after a very intense first delivery and ocean crossing, my love for sailing and the ocean still exists. I would absolutely do it again…hopefully next time in Australia.”
