Our History:
In 1994 Four Winds Camp on Orcas Island, Washington contacted Salish's co-founders, Katherine Murphy and Sophy Johnston, regarding developing an educational program that would utilize the 60' sailboat they were planning to build. Specifically, Four Winds wanted a program that would use the new boat during the Camp's off-season (spring & fall). Murphy and Johnston began to consider how to build an inquiry-based science curriculum to support the new learning standards being implemented in public schools to a boat-based project. They did extensive research about other residential outdoor learning centers and other boat programs in the Puget Sound area. As a result of that research, they decided to develop a program in which students were given the opportunity to do research in the field. Pre- and post-trip classroom sessions make this field trip easy to integrate into a teacher's curriculum and the program is tailored to each teacher and age level of the students.
Salish Sea Expeditions incorporated in September 1994 and a verbal agreement was made with the Four Winds board that SSE would bare-boat charter Carlyn in the spring and fall months. Numerous grants were received (using Four Winds nonprofit status) to support start-up costs, and in 1996 SSE was granted its own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
The first programs were conducted in the spring 1997 with six different schools from the Puget Sound region. Each successive spring we have added several new groups and had a high return rate of teachers. We have capacity for 15 programs during the spring season (mid March-early June) and 8 programs in the fall (mid September - mid October). In July of 1999, Ellie Linen Low replaced Kathy Murphy as the Co-Director with Johnston.