Clearwater derailed my life. Ask anyone who knows me. When I stepped aboard for the first time in June of 2023, I had just finished my first year at Mount Holyoke College. I had a clear path that included 4 years straight at a private liberal arts school followed by some work and then grad school. Now I am a college dropout with no clear plan. What is also true is I have never been happier.
I grew up with the impression that outdoor education and seasonal work are what a person does in their 20s. My parents and their closest friends met guiding in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and doing other seasonal work around the country, so when I finished my first semester of college I knew it was time for me to find my own community of dirtbag hippies. I ended up on Clearwater. I spent my first week thrown in the deep end of two education sail days, getting covered from head to toe in rust, and cleaning bilges for hours on end. I was in love. At the end of that first week, a crewmate told me they could tell I was hooked, and they could not have been more right.
It was a day in Kingston spent sewing leather and rereaving the mainsheet in pouring rain that grounded my initial joy into an earnest desire to learn everything and anything I could about sailing and caring for the boat. I spent the rest of my two months aboard pestering the bosun with questions, pouring over the rig manual and engineering log, and spending as much time on the jib sheets as I possibly could. I kept waiting for the honeymoon phase to wear off, for the long days and manual labor to start wearing on me, but they never did. I had even more joy and love for this boat and the people taking care of her on my last day than I did on my first. While I was drawn to Clearwater for environmental education, I found not only a love of sailing but a community and group of people I now call my closest friends.
August came and I had to return to school, but I couldn’t get the boat out of my head. Barely a month into the school year I was on the phone with a friend asking for advice about taking time off school to sail. Returning for a few weeks of winter maintenance solidified my decision, and by the time May rolled around, I was back on the Sloop with a contract through the end of the season.
This season has been a rollercoaster. In classic Clearwater tradition, I was field promoted to second mate before I had even remembered how to sail the Sloop. Every call I made and correction I gave felt like a blunder and I was counting down the days until a real second mate would come. Somewhere, though, in all those blunders and missteps, thanks to the patient guidance of the mate and captains, I found my footing. I learned to juggle two jobs, how to lead with confidence and conviction while still listening to and caring for every person I am working with, how to balance the laughing and joking with safety, and how to seamlessly set the tops’l (even if it took a day of setting and striking three times in a row). I won’t say these are things I expected to learn when I came back for my second season, but it turns out maybe they were the things I needed to learn. I am now looking at the last two weeks of my nearly nine months this season, and I don’t know where I am going from here except that I know I have found my passion and that Clearwater will always be here for me to come home to. I say goodbye for now knowing I have never been happier or more sure of my path than after having my life derailed.
After growing up outdoors in Alaska, Tobin Mayo-Kiely followed their love of environmental education to Clearwater, only to fall in love with sailing. They started last summer as an Educator Deckhand Trainee and Winter Deckhand then returned this as the Bosun and Second Mate.
For three generations, Clearwater has nurtured a deep and abiding love for the Hudson River because of the generosity of donors like you. Help us keep the Clearwater magic alive and the sloop sailing for the next generation.