Tomorrow, Clearwater begins her 2025 sailing season! Our crew has spent the last several weeks preparing to set sail following a busy restoration season at our Homeport at the Hudson River Maritime Museum on the Rondout Creek.

Over the winter, our captains, crew, shipwrights, and deckhands completed a variety of needed restoration and maintenance projects, including replacing deck planks in the starboard quarterdeck (back of the boat on the right) and planks on the topsides, rebuilding the generator box to improve strength, maintenance access, and eliminate rot. 

Another substantial project was building out a new refrigeration system. Unlike a household refrigerator, we can’t order a new fridge from a hardware store and slide it into place. Our galley (onboard kitchen!) requires a custom-built marine-grade fridge. The crew demoed the old fridge, designed a new orientation, and built a new, more efficient machine. 

The new reefer, as we lovingly call it, opens from the top and is officially up and running! The crew has returned to living on board for the season and is excited for crisp produce and the possibility of frozen ice cream. As the season goes on, we’ll continue to put a few final touches on the edges.

The last few weeks the crew has been hard at work preparing Clearwater to return to the River. We took down the shed that protects the deck and crew from the elements during the winter and began restoring the rigging for the spring season. The term we use for this process is uprig, meaning he pulleys, ropes, the boom, gaff, and topmast, and the sails are returned to their rightful places on the sloop. Each fall, the entire rig, except the mast, bowsprit, and wires that support them (stays and shrouds), are taken down, inspected, and stored out of the elements to improve longevity. Then in the spring, it all goes back in place, which requires a lot of hauling and heaving and climbing aloft and securing blocks (pulleys) so the sails can be hoisted and we can go sailing once more! This is a valuable opportunity for new crew to learn the location of all the parts of the rig, and become familiar with the jargon we use aboard.

After our previous mainsail reached the end of its lifespan last fall, our new mains’l arrived last Tuesday and the crew “bent it on” last Friday. The phrase “bend it on” relates to the verb “to bind”, which is done by pulling the sail into place and securing the four corners and three of the four sides, so when the sail is hauled up, it sets properly. The new mains’l was made in about 4 months by Force 10 Sailmaking and Rigging in Port Hadlock, WA. This is our first sail from Force 10 – last year’s new jib was made by Sherm Brewer, the inheritor of the legacy of famed Maine sailmaker Nat Wilson, who had made all our previous sails.

New and returning crew also spent this week training on and off the boat, spending a day in the office and a day at Norrie Point Environmental Center learning about Clearwater, and exploring river science, history, and emerging and legacy threats to the Hudson River.

Join us out on the river this season either for a sail, for a week as a volunteer, or as a member of crew. Our supporters are the wind in our sails – help keep Clearwater sailing, donate or become a member today.