The Nyack Expedition
by Captain Samantha Heyman

Like the explorers we’ve been honoring all year, sloop Clearwater has been searching out new waters. After our big return to Brooklyn, we spent an exciting and busy weekend at another new dock, the Nyack Boat Club. Like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, we wove our way through the mooring field of small yachts to come alongside at the small floating dock. We were grateful, for once, that there was a lack of wind since we had little wiggle room and a dock most certainly not built for a 69-ton sailing ship.


We hadn’t been there for over twenty years, and the enthusiasm of residents and club members was apparent and infectious. We took almost a hundred people out sailing on two sails on Saturday, getting a little push off the dock from one of their small motorboats, and welcomed over 300 visitors aboard for dockside tours on Sunday, despite the inclement weather. We made many new friends and were treated with exemplary hospitality, with the crew boogying down at the club’s party Saturday evening. And though we enjoyed our stay very much, we departed Nyack under cover of night at 9:30 PM on Sunday, guided back out by their launch driver, Steve.

Why would we take off at such a ridiculous hour you might ask? There is a saying: “When the depth of your boat exceeds the depth of the water, you are, most assuredly, aground”, and the two hours on either side of low tide at the Nyack Boat Club saw our hull most assuredly stuck in the soft mud of the Nyack shore. Thankfully, this does no harm to the hull—you just can’t go anywhere until you’re floating again. Monday was our big preparation day for the 3-day “Young Women at the Helm” program, and we needed to be in the city early and could not afford to lose the bulk of the day waiting for the tide to rise in Nyack. So we took our window, and with a 1,000,000 candle power spotlight to illuminate the obstacles, we hightailed it down to the Alpine Boat Basin about 9 miles to the south.

We were secure before the rain hit and enjoyed a quiet night to recover from a fun and eventful weekend. Thanks to Jack Yates, the Nyack Boat Club and the local residents for making us feel so welcome!