Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

A wedding on the waves

2 storms, Titanic shape ex-Oakland woman's marriage

By Mechele Cooper mcooper@centralmaine.com
Staff Writer

A pair of hurricanes wrecked havoc with a young couple's plan to marry aboard their research ship mapping the wreck of the Titanic.

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Evan Kovacs, left and his bride, MaryAnn Morin, are feted on the deck of The Jean Charcot following their impromptu wedding ceremony Sunday.

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Maryann Morin, 31, a Messalonskee High School graduate from Oakland, and Evan Kovacs, 35, are underwater three-dimensional imaging specialists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution aboard the research vessel The Jean Charcot.

They are part of a team of marine archeologists, maritime engineers, technicians and explorers who are documenting each inch of the debris field where the famous vessel sank on April 15, 1912.

Morin and Kovacks were married Sunday on the bow as the ship raced away from two hurricanes -- Danielle and Earl -- bearing down on Atlantic Canada.

The captain of the research vessel felt uncomfortable with Hurricane Danielle's track in the North Atlantic, Morin said, so he decided to return the ship to port.

Then Hurricane Earl came on Danielle's heels and threatened to bring damaging weather along the Atlantic seaboard through Labor Day.

Maryann Kovacs said some people may say it seemed "gimmicky" to get married on a ship to the Titanic expedition; but if you ask anyone there, it was the most natural and fitting thing to do.

"It seemed like all the stars, planets, and even the weather was pulling us in this direction," Maryann Kovacs said in an e-mail. "We were running from two hurricanes, but you wouldn't know it from the pictures because the fog cleared and sun came out just before I stepped on deck. It was beautiful."

Kovacs didn't give her much time to prepare for the wedding. He asked her to marry him only the prior evening, on the ship's upper deck as the sun set.

Kovacs said he was ready to propose to Morin a year ago but held onto the ring, waiting for the right moment to come along.

"I was planning on doing it out at sea, maybe over the site or something; but the hurricane chased us off, and now we start going separate directions -- so it's now or never," he said.

Maryann and a fellow researcher stayed up all night making paper flowers and fashioning a wedding gown out of a bedsheet for the impromptu nuptials.

"The fact that I had a maid of honor there, one of my best friends, staying up all night long, making paper flowers and sewing a white sheet for a wedding dress ... I mean, come on!" she said. "It almost makes you believe in fate."

Scenes from the expedition, including the wedding ceremony, were broadcast on MSNBC on Aug. 30, she said. NBC news correspondent Kerry Sanders is with scientists aboard The Jean Charcot and reporting on worldblog.msnbc.msn.com.

"What a way to let your family know, on national news," she said. "Our families were ecstatic. I could tell my father was crying or laughing on the phone after he watched the broadcast."

Morin and Kovacs met in 2005 during another expedition to the Titanic site, which is about 400 miles south of Newfoundland. They now live in Pocasset, Mass.

Morin said her crew is creating a mosaic of the wreck site. While the bow and stern have been filmed many times before, other parts of the wreck remain largely unexplored.

No full map of the wreck exists, she said.

"This survey is really raising bar on how Titanic will be viewed in the future," she said. "The wreck will most likely never be filmed in 2D again. Physically raising the Titanic is not a possibility, but now we have the tools and technology to virtually raise her for everyone to see before she falls apart."

After the The Jean Charcot docked in St. John's, Newfoundland, the couple had a quick honeymoon before they had to separate.

"I would have stayed for the second part of the expedition, but unfortunately I have to leave to do another job with National Park Service, filming ship wrecks in Lake Superior," she said. "Evan has to stay behind to finish the survey. He was planning on flying back with me and we'd be home for a couple days together, but it's too risky for him to fly out before the hurricane. He has to make sure he's in port by the time the ship has to leave."

"They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I don't know about that. I just love and want to be with him all the time. I will miss him terribly. We'll have to celebrate again when he gets back."

Mechele Cooper -- 623-3811, ext. 408

mcooper@centralmaine.com