Maine Maritime Academy sailing coach Tom Brown brings enthusiasm and Paralympic medal winning sailing experience to the job of building the academy’s competitive sailing program.—ELLSWORTH AMERICAN PHOTO BY STEPHEN RAPPAPORT

CASTINE — When Butch Minson retired as Maine Maritime Academy’s sailing coach last spring after a dozen seasons at the helm, MMA Waterfront Operations Director Tim Leach wondered where he could find a replacement with comparable skills and experience.

The answer turned out to be just across Blue Hill Bay.

Last fall, Northeast Harbor native and world-class sailor Tom Brown signed on to lead the Mariner sailing team. It would be hard to imagine a better choice.

A member of the United States Disabled Sailing Team, Brown won the bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and the silver medal four years later at the Athens games in the 2.4mR class. Brown has once again qualified for the team, racing this year in 23-foot Sonar keelboats.

Achieving that kind of success in international sailing requires tremendous discipline and hard work. Brown thinks he can impart that attitude in the MMA sailing team, as well as teaching them the fundamentals and fine points of sailing fast and winning races.

“There’s a different type of kid here,” Brown said while preparing four crews for last weekend’s dinghy racing in Newport, R.I., and Boston. “They don’t lie down. They’re tough, and the racing proves it. They had some where they were down and came back to win it.”

Brown has a lot to be pleased about.

Brown described the school’s offshore team as “decent,” but it is clearly better than that.

This spring, one crew from the offshore sailors won tough Colgate 26 regattas in both Los Angeles and Annapolis. Brown said he could have sent his second crew and they would have done just as well. What’s more, the future looks bright. Two weeks ago, the team’s inexperienced third offshore crew raced at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., and beat Coast Guard’s third crew. Brown said the crew had never raced before and had only sailed together once or twice before entering the Coast Guard regatta.

On the dinghy sailing team, things are a little more complicated.

“We have a very good core group, but we need to fill in a couple of spots,” Brown said.

Team captain Matt Stephens — who Brown says “is talented enough to be an All-American” — and his crew Lori Berggren have done well this year, despite struggling against the handicap imposed by Maine’s short spring sailing season.

“They had two big wins” at regattas, Brown said, “and they should have had a third.” According to Brown, a jammed halyard cost the pair a race and, ultimately, a regatta victory.

Many college teams from southern New England are on the water by February. At MMA, the team is lucky to have all of the ice out of Smith Cove by the middle of March and the weather can be problematic long after that.

“We’ve got some good dinghy sailors, but the weather is just miserable,” Brown said.

Brown has serious plans for building MMA’s competitive sailing program. Next year, he hopes to field both co-ed and women’s dinghy teams, and he would like to take the team to Florida during spring break, as many other college teams do, “so it can actually sail and race for a week.”

Brown is particularly anxious to increase the opportunities for women’s sailing at the academy. He would like to see a women’s offshore team, as well as a dinghy team and this summer the school is taking a tentative first step in that direction.

Brown said that Tess Deutch, one of the top crew on the dinghy team this spring, would be racing the school’s newly acquired 42-foot offshore sloop.

“She’s going to be a big-boat girl this summer,” Brown said with a laugh.

Although Brown has years of experience as a private sailing coach, he has relatively little experience coaching a college team. He coached at MMA for one season during the early 1990s, and was happy to return when Leach called to offer him the job.

Besides the quality of MMA’s students, Brown said, Castine itself is “a beautiful place to sail” and to race. The tides and “vicious current” of the Bagaduce River that flows into Penobscot Bay through Castine Harbor provides ample challenge for even the best sailor.

Brown seems to be committed to coaching at MMA for the long term. He and his wife recently sold a house in Blue Hill and moved with their four children to a house overlooking the Castine Harbor.

Do the move, and Brown’s long-range planning, mean that he enjoys college coaching?

“Yeah,” he replied with a huge grin. “This college.”