Scholarship Allows Student to Sail China Sea for a Year

Contact: Philip Montgomery
Phone: (713) 831-4792

Scholarship Allows Student to Sail China Sea for a Year

David Marolf, a Rice University student and
the recipient of a Watson Fellowship, will spend a year learning about the maritime industry of Southeast Asia and sailing with
seafaring tribes of nomads who ply primitive craft along ancient
trading routes.

In August, Marolf, a 21-year-old senior majoring in political
science and policy studies, will begin his year abroad in Singapore,
where he will spend three months sailing small boats, reading
academic literature and interviewing professionals at the Port
Authority of Singapore. The remaining nine months, he will be a
participant and an observer on board the primitive boats that sail
the waters of the South China Sea. Finally, homeward bound, he will
cross the Pacific Ocean by working for passage on a large oceangoing
ship.

In March, Marolf received a $16,000 grant from the Thomas J.
Watson Foundation, a charitable trust fund. The Rhode Island-based
foundation supports independent student travel and study outside the
United States for the year following graduation. Since the program
began in 1968, the foundation has awarded more than 1,850 fellowships.

Although the fellowship gives Marolf a great deal of freedom,
some of the rules are strict. For example, he cannot enter the
United States for one year once his fellowship begins in August.
That means he can only visit his parents if they travel to Southeast
Asia. He also cannot accept money for his labor. He can trade labor for passage or food, but he cannot accept cash. The fellowship
encourages the recipient to thrive and complete a project while
living in the isolation of a foreign culture.

Marolf will certainly find isolation when he begins living with
the oceangoing nomads who trade and fish along the coast of
Southeast Asia. Once he steps aboard a junk-like craft, he will be
isolated from land and his own culture. But taking that step over
the gunwales is important to his Watson research. He wants to learn
about the seafarers’ sailing and navigation techniques, cultures and
myths.

“The best way for me to learn about maritime culture is to live
it,” he said in his proposal to the Watson Foundation.
Marolf said he will work his way along the coast of Southeast
Asia traveling along the shore of countries such as Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Most of the vessels upon which he pins his hopes for hitching a
ride are sailing crafts built with and powered by ancient
technologies.
Marolf’s sailing skills are limited, and bad luck has frustrated
his attempts to enhance his skills.

In the Navy ROTC program at
Rice, he had one opportunity to sail the unit’s 22-foot Sea Owl, but
on his appointed day, the wind died on Clear Lake. The crew had to
maneuver using the craft’s motor.

Marolf admits he has a lot to learn.”I’m not an old salt at all,” said Marolf. “The hardest part of
my project is getting on the first boat.”

Rice University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian
private university dedicated to undergraduate teaching and graduate
studies, research and professional training in selected disciplines.

It has an undergraduate student population of 2,584, a graduate and
professional student population of 1,489 and a full-time faculty of
448.

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