What is it that’s so impactful about the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater? For the last three years, I’ve been telling people about how my time as the Onboard Program Coordinator has changed my life, but I rarely get a chance to share how: Clearwater has taught me that it’s never too late to live and learn in accordance with your values.
I came to Clearwater as a Brooklynite having what I jokingly described as a “quarter-life crisis” – hustling to pursue a career in museums while working multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet, and dealing with the impacts of COVID in NYC’s public schools, leaving me burnt out and disillusioned. I had been seeking opportunities to get on the water and learn about sailing, but couldn’t afford classes, and at 27 I felt like I had missed my opportunity to “run away to sea.” Like many in my cohort, feeling my options dwindling, I was toying with the idea of going to grad school. I needed to remind myself that I had the power to change my life.
As I looked for opportunities to do hands-on work on the water, I found Clearwater online and applied for a trainee position. I was hired as an Onboard Program Coordinator instead, so I sublet my room for a few months, brought my bicycle and a duffel bag onto an off-peak train, and began my life onboard the Sloop.
The next few weeks were one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had. It was one of the first times in my life that I felt I was pushing myself to learn something that didn’t come naturally, (in fact, I would say I showed very little aptitude for sailing at all), and there were many times when I felt it would be better for me to give up. Realizing that many of the people training me were a decade younger, and were trusted with safety-sensitive jobs because of skills they developed on the Clearwater, made me swallow my pride and dedicate myself to the slow process of learning the daily complexities of a large sailing vessel. It was in this process that I came to completely redefine my understanding of what it means to be a lifelong learner, and what it means to build community.
I came to realize that Clearwater is a learning environment like none I had encountered in 10 years of teaching: a place where anyone can learn anything, with patience, humility, and determination. A sailing ship is a place where personal responsibility means something deeper – responsibility to yourself, to your shipmates, to a place, and a legacy of generations past and future.
Residing on the Sloop I had the opportunity to live something most do not: a community where accountability, grace, and a shared mission are transformed into a living, breathing practice. The
unique values-driven community makes this boat such a deeply transformative space – not just a job, but a place that has given me so many lifelong friends, family, and direction. As I learned to lead a program as a very green hand, I found a dynamic sense of gratitude that fueled me through the long days and leaky bunks. A shared sense of wonder and the camaraderie of commitment have created lasting relationships in my life, and memories so vivid that I can feel the wind (and the hogchoker slime) just thinking about them.
When I had been working here for only about a month, I wrote in my journal, “Could this be a place that I come home to?” But as time went on, I began to recognize the many names of people who had lived and worked aboard over the decades, and I realized that this place is already a home to many people. What makes it a home is this powerful feeling that learning anything, doing anything, is possible if we do it in community.
As I grew as a leader during my time on the Clearwater, I became increasingly determined to share this feeling with as many people as possible, whether they were youth trainees I was supervising for a summer, or students I was educating for a couple of hours. In my role running onboard programs, I have sought to create a space where everyone who steps aboard can feel as supported and inspired as I have felt in my journey here. In my time here we’ve grown our Onboard Volunteer, Youth Empowerment (YEP), and Sailing Classroom Programs, supporting over 100 new onboard volunteers, over 90 YEP participants, and dozens of young trainees, sharing the transformative experience of the Sloop as possible.
The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater is a unique treasure in the Hudson Valley and the tall ship fleet because it is a space where people live and learn in true community in service of a shared mission of care and growth.
To our community: thank you for continuing to build this home under sail. Stewarding this community – and this river – has been a privilege.
Chloe Grey Smith has served the last two seasons as an Onboard Program Coordinator, and this year as the Senior Onboard Program Coordinator. Originally from South Florida, they are an experienced museum educator previously working at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Wyckoff House Museum developing and teaching inclusive educational programs.
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.
