August
2001
Offshore Magazine
NORTHEAST NEIGHBORS:
NANCY GIBSON
This harbormaster in Stonington, Connecticut, boats
to the beat of a different drum.
By Dan Mathers
The satin, gray surface of Stonington Harbor was
perfectly still. In the distance, a lone fishing trawler
making its way up the harbor was being followed by a
dense fog that seemingly swallowed boats as it blanketed
the harbor. Other than the trawler, there was nobody
else to be seen except us.
Nancy Gibson, the harbormaster in these parts, and I
were weaving our way through the harbor in her 17-foot
Whaler, checking moorings, when suddenly the engine
coughed and died, and there was nothing but silence.
“Now what is it?” barked Gibson. She got up from the
helm and started tinkering with the engine, muttering,
“I’m better at sailboats.” A couple of tries to get the
boat running again produced nothing. “Can you paddle?”
she asked me.
Normally, I’d be offended if a great-grandmother who was
born before the Depression cast a doubtful glance my way
and asked if I was capable of paddling. I might not be
Hulk Hogan, but I’m not Minnie Pearl either. But when
Gibson asks me, my pride isn’t hurt. Regardless of her
age, Gibson exudes the toughness of a drill instructor,
and I sheepishly start to pick up a paddle when she
finally gets the motor running and we’re off again.
Gibson isn’t your typical harbormaster. And she isn’t
your typical great-grandmother. Actually, “typical” has
no place in the catalogue of words one might use to
describe Nancy Gibson. She’s hesitant to give her age,
and who could blame her? As she says, someone is bound
to say: “Having a woman harbormaster is bad enough, but
a senior citizen one? She’s getting senile.” But Gibson
has more energy than most 29-year-olds I know. She knows
boats, she’s sharp as a tack and , when she wants, she
can curse along with the saltiest of pirates.
“I don’t act my age,” Gibson says.
Not even close. Her Mercedes has a lenseless pair of
black-rimmed eyeglasses sticking out of its grill. You
can’t miss her boat — it’s the only one in the harbor
painted bright yellow, with the name Different Drummer
painted along the sides. The Whaler she had before this
one was named Alfred E. Newman.
She needs all that energy, and that sense of humor, in
her job. Being harbormaster in Stonington, Connecticut,
is no easy task. The harbor has gone through a sea
change since the mid-1970s, and Stonington has only
recently begun to address those changes.
Twenty-five years ago, Stonington was a quiet harbor
with plenty of moorings. Boaters only needed the
harbormaster’s verbal approval to secure a mooring, and
written records were few and far between. But, during
the next decade, the demand for moorings exploded and
the harbor became crowded. By 1985 it was apparent some
rules were needed, and Stonington decided to draw-up a
harbor management plan. It took 15 years to create a
plan everyone could live with, and the plan was passed
in 2000.
Now the bulk of work of implementing the plan falls on
Gibson, who must educate boaters about the rules of the
harbor, develop a system for distributing moorings,
organize the harbormaster’s records and keep any eye on
development pressures along the harbor. It’s a full
plate, but if anyone can handle it in stride, it’s
Gibson.
Gibson has been on boats since she was six months old.
“I was not at the helm,” she says. She’s lived in
Stonington since 1962, and she has a history of
volunteering in her community. She’s served as chairman
of the hospital auxiliary, chairman of the garden club
and president of the Stonington Players, a local theatre
group. It was because of the spirit of community service
that she said “yes” when asked in the early 1990s to be
deputy harbormaster and then, in 1998, to be
harbormaster.
While Gibson only gets an annual salary of $750 from the
state to cover expenses — which in reality barely covers
phone calls and stamps — she regularly works far more
than 40 hours a week. Part of that is the job; part of
that is probably her personality. Trying to install a
system of distributing moorings where previously there
was no system, and trying to track down boaters on
moorings without any records, takes long hours. Gibson
often finds herself getting only a handful of hours of
sleep. But while that would leave many people unable to
function, Gibson seems to thrive on it.
“I’m a night owl,” she says. “I get a second wind around
9:30 at night and I’m good until four o’clock in the
morning.”
Despite the long hours and hard work, Gibson still takes
pleasure in her job. She enjoys the challenge of, as she
puts it, “making order out of chaos in the paperwork
department,” which, she says, is her favorite part of
the job. She plans to finish out her current term as
harbormaster, which ends next spring. She’ll decide then
whether the harbor duties have been organized enough for
someone else to take over. But for now, she’s content
creating order around Stonington Harbor.
“I like to make myself useful,” she says, “and what
better way to do that than in someplace that I love?”
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