Captain Juana Garcia
Meet Captain Juana Garcia
She's breaking ground on the water. The first female captain in New York Water Taxi's 14-year history, Juana Garcia, started piloting ferries last week. "I always feel being a woman you've just got to prove that you can do whatever the guys can do," said Garcia, 26.
Garcia worked her way up at New York Water Taxi, starting as a deckhand eight years ago, doing a stint in concessions and studying to get her captain's license after-hours at a nautical school on Long Island. The Brooklyn mom of two is now one of 17 captains piloting routes along the East and Hudson rivers for the ferry company.
"Taxi, backing away from the hull," Garcia radioed Friday as she pulled her yellow-and-black vessel out of the dock at Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn. It was her second day behind the wheel. "I feel very proud. I've never seen another female captain," she said. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Garcia grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She has never been a "girly-girl," she said, and was drawn to complex, dirty work as a deckhand and enjoyed the challenge of learning to pilot a ferry.
"In my mom's words, I'm very ambitious," she said. Garcia is not the first woman to pilot a ferry in New York waters. In 2009, a New York Waterway captain, Brittany Catanzaro, helped rescue the passengers aboard US Airways Flight 1549 after it made an emergency landing on the Hudson River.
But it is still rare for women to climb to captain in the male-dominated marine industry. "Juana has the tenacity to stay with it," said her boss, Helena Durst, New York Water Taxi president. "As a woman-led organization, this is extremely important to us," added Durst, who is the daughter of real estate mogul Douglas Durst.