Environmental sloop Clearwater undergoing restoration

[OneBlueSky]

By Keith Eddints
The Journal News
January 22, 2006

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060122/NEWS05/601220311/1021



SAUGERTIES -- Thirty-seven years after it first sailed up the Hudson and helped launch the campaign to restore the river, the sloop Clearwater has been lashed to a dock in this upstate village and stripped of its mast, rigging, bowsprit and half its deck for a major restoration of its own.

Shrink-wrapped under a tight plastic seal held up by stem-to-stern scaffolding that covers the deck like the ribs of a whale, the flagship of the nation's modern environmental movement is almost indistinguishable from dozens of other boats around Lynch's Marina. But under the white plastic skin, a winter crew, three hired shipwrights, both of the vessel's captains and a boatload of volunteers are swarming around the ship in the first major overhaul since it was built in 1969.

Back then, the Hudson was a dumping ground for industrial and human waste. But, as the Hudson sprang back, the Clearwater wore down. Today, the boat is the last of its kind on the river and nearly twice the age when most of its predecessors were junked.

"When they were working sloops, at 20, they'd be worn out, and the normal thing was to shove them up a creek and let them rot," said Capt. Patrick Flynn, describing the two centuries when sloops like Clearwater were the trucks and buses of the Hudson. "Obviously, we can't do that, and we don't want to with Clearwater."

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http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060122/NEWS05/601220311/1021

I was at the launching in South Bristol ME in 1969 and worked for the organization for several years, so this is particularly interesting to me . . .