Climbing up & Breaking the Glass Ceiling ...

Carolyn Kurtz of South Tampa — Jewish, 45, and a single mom — has ventured where most women, let alone Jewish women, rarely go, and the Florida Jewish Museum has honored her for it.

This month she and five other Jewish women were honored with the Florida Jewish Museum’s Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award for succeeding in fields usually dominated by men. Of all the honorees to date, Kurtz is the most unusual. She is a harbor pilot.

She has been a harbor pilot for the Port of Tampa for the last 15 years, ever since she became the first woman to hold that position in Florida.

“Capt. Carolyn Kurtz, harbor pilot,” often can be found jumping from a tugboat onto a rope ladder, then climbing up the side of a cargo ship. She takes over and pilots the ship through the 42-mile channel leading into the port.

At other times Kurtz, the 5-foot-3 mother of a 9-year-old may be found at Congregation Schaarai Zedek in Tampa where she is a member and volunteers in the congregational choir.

When Kurtz joined Congregation Schaarai Zedek after her son Jack was born, she found people were taken aback upon learning of her job.

“They were shocked and asked if any other Jewish people were out there doing what I did,” she said. “The truth is there are very few.” Kurtz added that Jews are not typically drawn to this kind of work.

She came by her work at sea naturally, she said. Her father, who worked in the business end of the shipping business in her native New York, gave his family early exposure to the sea.

“My mother, sister and I traveled on cargo ships in the summer to get out of the heat and get away,” she said. Their ventures included Panama, her mother’s native Scotland and Israel.

The voyages left a deep impression on the young Kurtz. “The sea was the only thing that ever held my interest,” she said. “I realized I never could work at a desk.”

Kurtz entered the Merchant Marine Academy in New York and graduated in 1986.

Her parents, she said, were supportive. “Secretly I think my father was thrilled,” she said, adding that both parents still had some concerns about her being aboard ship in potential war zones.

“I was in the Persian Gulf in ’87 and ’88 during the Iran-Iraq conflict,” she said. “I joined the ship in Kuwait and was very conscious of being both a woman and a Jew.”

Kurtz, who worked on cargo ships carrying jet fuel, said she was hyper-aware of her Jewishness, even though only her shipmates knew she was Jewish.

Ironically, she said, the ships sailed under American flags, but were actually owned by an Israeli parent company, the Overseas Shipholding Group (OSG), now headquartered in Tampa.

When she became a harbor pilot in 1995, Kurtz said her parents were thrilled because she wouldn’t be going out to sea anymore.

The giant cargo ships now in her charge carry crude oil, steel, lumber, and all sorts of food products, including off-season fruit from Central and South America. “They actually have a tanker filled with fresh orange juice,” she said.

The job of harbor pilot is not always smooth sailing.

For starters, staying alert in the wee hours of the morning when a ship pulls up requires stamina and discipline. The physical challenges are enough to overwhelm a person much larger than Kurtz.

Then there is weather — including, at various times, gale force winds, rough seas and heavy rain.

“Climbing up and down the side of a ship in bad weather and at night is dangerous,” Kurtz said. “The wind can make it hard to control a ship and you get tired.”

Kurtz, who works on alternate two-week periods, usually piloting in one or two ships a day on her watch, said she was well-trained to adjust to changing weather conditions.

The pilot has to be in the pilot station 30 minutes before an incoming ship arrives in the channel, she said, in order to assess the weather and warn ships not to enter unless they are too far in to go back.

“In that case,” she said, “you do the best you can with the wind and rain thrashing you.”

Kurtz has been fortunate, weather-wise. “In 15 years I’ve never had to take a ship out and fly home from somewhere,” she said.

Being a woman has brought other challenges. Ship captains are not used to seeing women harbor pilots and have been sometimes skeptical about turning over their ship to a woman.

“They are turning their ship over to me and I have to inspire confidence,” she said of the ship captains, “but all they really care about when the novelty wears off is that you bring their ship in safely.”

One period in her career brought particular surprise to captains.

“I worked until I was five and a half months pregnant,” she said, noting the astonished look of a captain seeing not only a woman, but a pregnant one climbing over the side of his ship.

Kurtz said even now she is one of only two female harbor pilots in the state, the other headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale.

“I’ve had to work harder to prove myself,” she said. “I have to gain trust not only from the ship captains, but from my partners on the pilot ship as well.”

Kurtz expressed pride in having mastered the special skills needed by harbor pilots.

Sea captains, who must keep their ships at least two miles away from another vessel, have lots of open sea around them, Kurtz said, whereas navigating a ship within a channel is much more restricted and requires special training.

The entrance to the channel is 700 feet wide, but the rest of the waterway is 500 feet wide with two-way traffic.

“Ships are 100 feet wide on average,” she said, “and it takes meticulous navigation at times to be in a 250 ft. slice of water,” which happens when incoming and outgoing ships have to pass.

The rewards of the job are worth it all, Kurtz said. “It’s very satisfying every day,” said the petite harbor pilot. “You’re in charge of facilitating a whole series of events and doing it safely.”

“It’s a lot of responsibility, but I just love it.”