It's WINDSday| March 9, 2022

Celebrating the Power of Wind, Clean Energy and a Green Environment

Michael “Fego” Feggans, center, and Mario Torrey, right, were guests at Laura Habr’s Croc’s Restaurant for Offshore Wind Drinks, a national effort coordinated locally by top engineering firms. 

Michael Feggans graduated from Tallwood High School in 2001, then saw the world during a 20-year career in the Air Force where he specialized in managing health clinics, retiring as a master sergeant. Now he’s back home in Virginia Beach, running his own company that focuses on cybersecurity and encouraging veterans to enter the offshore wind field.

“I am talking mostly to enlisted men and women considering life after the military and telling them how they can use their skills to work on wind turbines out at sea,” says Feggans, who squeezed in an online bachelors from Virginia Tech and a masters from Norfolk State while in the Air Force where he served everywhere from Oklahoma to Guam. “I am encouraging them to use their GI bill and other benefits to get their certifications at the New College Institute (NCI) in Martinsville.”

That’s right, Martinsville in southside Virginia. The state has a Mid Atlantic Wind Training Alliance that includes two Norfolk schools, Centura College and Mid Atlantic Maritime Institute, plus NCI, which has a strong advanced manufacturing program. “Students come there to learn how to safely work at heights in environments similar to those of wind turbines,” says Fego, his Air Force nickname. “And they also gain critical safety skills, so they know what to do if someone is injured.” That’s valuable since the towers in Dominion’s CVOW project will be 800 feet in the air. ”Vets,” says Fego, “are good at multi-tasking and looking out for others.”

His company, Outerbridge Tech, named for the street on which he grew up in VB’s Charleston Lakes, has a small office in Gather at Town Center but is looking to grow. Check Fego’s website for opportunities, and if you’re a vet hoping to “climb the ladder to success” in offshore wind, email him at info@outerbridgetech.com. 

He graduated from Churchland High in 2006. 16 years later Mario Torrey had circumnavigated the globe three times and visited 70 countries, all aboard commercial and military ships as a merchant mariner. “I loved every minute of it,” says Torrey, who trained to be a deck hand at the Seafarer’s Union’s Paul Hall Center in Piney Point, Maryland, rising to boatswain. “The variety and challenges were amazing. I felt like I never did a day of work.”

Now Torrey is off the water and traveling throughout the mid-Atlantic, promoting the opportunities that the offshore wind industry is creating and the Paul Hall Center is teaching. “They have a great apprentice program that includes time in the classroom and at sea.” At Paul Hall, they learn how to run equipment and direct crews. “You must have people who can do the hand signals and operate the cranes,” says Bart Rogers, Assistant VP for Maritime Training. “You need people who can handle the loads on top of those cranes and put them in the right places.”

Although he is living in Maryland now, Mario Torrey is often back home to visit family and talk up the merchant marine, which paid him well and opened his eyes to a water borne future, whether it’s bringing a car carrier into port or now, standing up a wind farm. “I want to help other young people have the experiences I did.” Go to seafarers.org to learn more. 

In an earlier issue, we profiled this Beach native and James Madison senior who hoped to land a job back home working in offshore wind. Well guess what? With our help, he did. Next week, learn who hired this Ocean Lakes High grad and about a trip he’s taking in May to Texas with 18 fellow JMU seniors in pursuit of a national wind competition crown. 

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Offshore Wind Drinks Event, March 2, 2022 at Croc's in Virginia Beach