Obituary of Elaine Chris Cobb

Elaine Chris Cobb passed December 2. 2024. She came, as she would say, “from the Nuns” in Cleveland, Ohio born 6/16/1949 and grew up among Catholic and the Mennonite. She trained as a Registered Nurse at the Cleveland Clinic while working full time.

Looking for a break after graduation, Chris came to Maine in 1974 as a windjammer passenger and was asked to fill in as second cook. Several seasons and several schooners later she was at OpSail 76 Tall Ships in New York City where she met the mate on a barkentine and married him. A stint in a sailing school ship in the Mediterranean as Medical Officer led to a European tour and a Paris honeymoon. 

In her profession Chris worked many years at Pen Bay Hospital. In ICU and the Emergency Room before becoming School Nurse at Rockland then Wiscasset, a job she loved. She would always wear “healthy snack” earrings. 

Chris and Steve owned and operated the schooner Mary Day for many years in the Windjammer trade sailing out of Camden Maine.  More recently Chris took a turn to travel again and became a tour guide/director leading escorted coach tours throughout New England and the Maritime Provinces.

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I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"  And that is dying...