Hudson River Day returns to waterfront
Hudson River Day returns to the Rondout Waterfront Saturday with a new twist, a Boat Building Challenge that pits 13 teams in a four-hour contest to build a 12-foot Carolina bateau for a late afternoon race.
Visitors can watch the builders put together their boat from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., said Dan Proctor, a member of the board of directors of the Hudson River Maritime Museum, which is hosting the event.
After a judging session at 3:30 p.m., the two-person teams have 30 minutes to get their boat in the water and ready for the race, which starts at 4 p.m.
The race is expected to have multiple heats that will take contestants on a course that will run between 50-75 feet from the launch to a buoy and back, Proctor said.
Two of the teams are made up of boat-building pros from North Carolina: Bobby Staab’s Carolina Flare team and teens Shelby Freeman and Bryce Becker, both from Sea Level, North Carolina.
Staab, a boat-building world champion, comes from a family with generations of boat builders, Proctor said.
Local teams include Keegan Ales, The Maritime Museum’s own team featuring women boat builders, a youth team sponsored by Herzog’s Hardware, the Mount’s River Rats Team, the Rifton Rascals, Two Guys With Hammer, and Team Caduceus.
Each team is provided with the same amount of wood and caulking, but must provide their own tools, Proctor said.
They’ll work under a tent across from the museum, where they will be provided with 20 amps of electricity for power tools, Proctor said.
Hand tools are also an option, he added.
The race can get a bit crazy, with the boats occasionally bumping into each other and sometimes even sinking, Proctor said.
In case of any mishap, a police boat is stationed next to the course, and there’s a safety monitor, Proctor said.
“Safety is built into our planning,” Proctor said.
Prizes include cash awards of $500, $300 and $200 for the top-three finishers, along with other awards for other more unusual things.
Proctor, who spent nearly 30 years in the Navy, came to Kingston a few years ago, said he got the idea to host a boat-building challenge on Hudson River Day after seeing one in North Carolina, where challenges are held in Georgetown and Beaufort.
“They’re very popular,” Proctor said. “One brought in upwards of 20,000 people.”
Proctor expected 10 teams at most, and he said he was excited to have 13 actually sign up.
While the competition is fun for the public, the challenge really celebrates the art of boat building, a craft which has happened along the banks of the Rondout Creek for centuries, he added
“Kingston had a lot of boat building,” Proctor said. “Its heyday was in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
The name Rondout is a colloquialism of the name originally given to the creek by European settlers, “Redoubt,” which meant a small fort, Proctor said.
By the mid-19th century, Rondout, then a separate municipality from Kingston, became a thriving community serving as a hub where barges on D+H Canal reached the Hudson River, Proctor said.
Key 19th-century commodities included bricks and cement, Proctor said.
The shipbuilders that operated on the banks of the Hudson built many different kinds of craft.
“Most of the tugboats that operated on the Hudson were built here,” Proctor said.
Before that, they built sloops, which were the workhorses of river trade in the age of sail, carrying everything from livestock and produce, until they were supplanted by steam tugs and barges, said Lisa Cline, the museum’s executive director.
Cline said past Hudson River Days have drawn between 700-1,000, people depending on the weather.
But this year she expects a bigger crowd, thanks to the boat-building challenge, coupled with the Bob Dylan’s concerts at the nearby Hutton Brickyards Friday and Saturday night.
The museum has teamed up with the Trolley Museum of New York on a shuttle that leaves from Kingston Point Park and runs to the museum for those who may want to check out Hudson River Day before Dylan takes the stage Saturday evening.
Other activities include a kid-sized boat race, where kids can build little boats and race them down a flume-like course at 11 a.m., noon 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m..
Kids can also make their own signal flag name tags, while learning about the various signal flags used in the maritime trade, or take free tours of the museum.
Guests can also check out the Solar Sal 44, an entirely solar-powered wooden craft under construction in a barn adjacent to the tugboat Mathilda; or check the wooden-hulled Woody Guthrie, which is undergoing a complete overhaul.
Solar Sal 44, which features a wooden hull made from strips of cedar, is being built by the museum’s shipwrights under contract. Cline said its name is derived from the old Erie Canal song “A Mule Named Sal.”
The barges on the canal were pulled by mules and donkeys who walked an adjacent towpath often led by a girl or woman wearing a long gown and bonnet, Cline said.
The boat school’s workshop will play host to woodworking throughout the day, and a cooper will be making casks nearby.
These watertight containers were indispensable in shipping before containerization, Cline said.
Food and drink will be available and Keegan Ales will have a beer tent.
Everything with Hudson River Day ties back to the river and ways to get on it ranging from boating, to kayaking, and crew and longboats, Cline said.
“It’s about the river, the history of the river, its maritime history and its tributaries, and its industry,” Cline said.
The museum doesn’t want the story it tells about the river to end with the age of sail, or the steamboats of yore, Cline said
Instead, she wants that story to extend to the present, and show the museum’s guests why it matters to them today.
Cline admitted it’s a tough environment for small museums to exist in, but she’s tackling this in part by building partnerships with other small museums like the D+H Canal Museum and the Trolley Museum of New York.
“Small museums are struggling to stay relevant,” Cline said. “We can tell story as a group.”
And staying relevant is key to the museum’s future, she added.
It’s refreshing the exhibits and emphasizing why the past is important, Cline said.
The museum is also expanding its programming, which ranges from adult classes and lectures to walking tours of the Rondout Area and car tours of places further afield, like sites along the D+H Canal, she added.
An important part of that is the Wooden Boat Building School, which brings part of the Hudson River’s history to life.
“These are things craftspeople have been doing for 100, 200 years,” Cline said. “We can show people how it’s done.”
Cline said one thing the museum won’t do is turn to off-mission programs for the sake of raising money.
“We use the mission, and come up with business objectives, which all roll back to the mission,” Proctor said.