Latest Clearwater Blog Posts
It’s the little things that make Clearwater hard to leave
From bottom left: Dorina (seated), Chris Spicer, Sarah Underhill, Emily Feldsburg, and Denise Woodin (May 1980) On May 17, 1980—Clearwater’s 11th birthday--I arrived at Fulton Ferry in Brooklyn for my first week as a volunteer crew member. I felt nervous about traveling [...]
25 Years Along the Shore: Tales from Tideline
It started with the Weavers’ Carnegie Hall album, a valuable resource for a young guitar player…so I was aware of Pete back in the 60’s. A decade later, I was living in Red Hook, and somehow got invited to sing and play with my [...]
30 Years and Counting
A sailboat is an incredible thing. It’s a complex machine, made of simple machines. Pulleys, levers, wheels and axles orchestrate a ballet of mechanical advantage, powered by friction, muscle and currents of air. On a tall ship, Newtonian physics is taken to a high [...]
The Crew, the River, and Why I Keep Coming Back
Peter at the Tiller, South Street Seaport, 1991 My family, the Cafieros, had been sailors for generations before my grandfather Claudio emigrated to New York City and became the captain of a railroad barge in the harbor. Those barges included living quarters [...]
Clearwater Member Spotlight: Bridget Kenny
Growing up in the Hudson Valley, Bridget Kenny attended the Great Hudson River Revival with her parents, listened to Pete Seeger’s music, and encountered the sloop in the 1980s at the Strawberry Festival in Newburgh. A few years later, she sailed on Clearwater for [...]
From Queerwater to Crew: Discovering My Place on the Sloop Clearwater
The first time I heard of The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, I was 13 in a community center, being handed a flyer about “Queerwater”- a 3 day youth program that I was just barely too young for. I hadn’t given it much thought, considering [...]