HUDSON SLOOP CLUB
River adventures and craft-building with the Hudson Sloop Club.
Ages 8-15 | Monday, August 11 - Friday, August 22 (two weeks) | 10am - 3pm
A two-week workshop of building boats to explore the ecology, history, and culture of the Hudson River. Each day is a mix of foraging, planning, designing, and constructing our own crafts, taking breaks to learn from local experts about the river. The goal is for every participant to build a craft, test it out, and gain comfort on and knowledge of the Hudson River.
Working with every tool available in the Sloop Club’s shop -- from our bare hands to traditional working tools and modern cordless drills -- we learned the skills necessary to take a boat-project from the drawing board to the shop floor, and out onto the river. Our boat projects focused on found, natural, and man-made objects: we harvested invasive phragmites and bundled them together with salvaged cords to make modern recycled versions of traditional reed boats. We focused on different forms of propulsion, making sails from found fabric, building bicycle-powered propellers and hand-driven water wheels. Check out the gallery below of the boats we built, our afternoon fishing trips, visits from Sloop Club members, swims at Oakdale park, and our final excursion on the Hudson River.
A workshop by the Hudson Sloop Club, with Nick Zachos, Lucy Segar, Sam Merrett, and Ngounga Badila.
