Sailing Season Reflections from Captain Rory Kane

Photo: Carl Rickard

A couple of weeks back, Clearwater completed her 55th sailing season and I finished my 12th season on board. Since launching in 1969, over half a million students, community members, advocates, and musicians have sailed with us experiencing the Hudson River firsthand from the deck.

Just like we have every year before, we spend a good part of the late fall transitioning to the winter restoration season. We downrigged the boat, set up shop in the barn at the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, and built a winter cover to protect the Sloop and crew from the elements.

The original Hudson River Sloops of the 18th and 19th centuries delivered cargo and ferried people up and down the river. Their lifespan on the river typically lasted between 5 and 15 years. Thanks to carefully planned restoration efforts, and the unwavering support of our community, Clearwater has far exceeded the typical lifespan of similar vessels, making her the Hudson River’s one-of-a-kind symbol of environmental advocacy and hope.

Winter is when the critical and necessary work of restoring the Clearwater happens. If you visit the sloop during the winter months, it may seem like the boat is lying dormant on the Rondout Creek under her big white cover, but during these coldest months, a crew of professionals, trainees, and volunteers are hard at work, making sure that the Sloop is ready to return to sailing in April.

Over the coming months, we’ll be undertaking standard maintenance, like repainting and re-varnishing deck boxes and hatches, servicing all our blocks (pulley systems), repairing seams between deck planks, and winterizing the engine. We are also in the planning stages for our major winter 2026 – 2027 project: to restore the sloop above the waterline, specifically, the topsides (upper part of the side of the ship that sits above the waterline), and transom (the rear face of the boat), concluding a twenty-year phased restoration of the hull.

When I look back on my 12 years on board, I am in awe at the amount of effort and work that has kept Clearwater sailing each season. It is truly life-changing to come aboard the sloop for an Education or Public Sail and experience her mission and her sailing firsthand. Whenever I’m sailing Clearwater, I can’t help but remember and be grateful to all of the winter crews; shipwrights, engineers, bosuns, trainees, and volunteers of the past 55 years that have made that possible.

– Rory Kane, Captain, Clearwater

Born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, Captain Rory Kane’s first sailing experience was as a volunteer aboard Clearwater in 2012. Since then, in addition to serving in nearly every position on the Sloop, he has vast experience on Tall Ships up and down the East and West Coasts, but always returned to the Hudson Valley because of the Clearwater Community. Having acquired his Captain’s License in 2019, and a decade of experience, Rory rejoined Clearwater as Captain in 2022.

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