Nautical Non-Profit Launches Sailing Camp, Restores Historic Vessel
Buoyant USA, a Lower Manhattan-based non-profit organization building on 25 years of seasonal sailing and education, is re-launching Harbor Camp, a sailing access and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) program, this August.
Harbor Camp is skippered by Tribeca resident Ewa Berton, in partnership with Manhattan By Sail, the company (run by her husband Tom Berton, a fixture on the Lower Manhattan sailing scene for decades) that offers public sails from Pier 17 aboard the tall ship Clipper City. Harbor Camp will welcome a maximum of 20 students per week (ages eight to 12), who will dive into a mix of seamanship fundamentals (including safety, knots, and terminology) then progress to more advanced concepts (navigation and how wind powers sails), while also experiencing time on the water aboard Clipper City—a modern replica of an historic cargo schooner from 1854.
“The idea reprises a program that we used to run in partnership with the Waterfront Alliance, which operated through 2019,” says Ms. Berton. “Kids come into our sailing program nervous, but they leave transformed.”
The cost for Harbor Camp (which will run in the last two weeks of August) will be $975 per week, “but 30 percent of the seats will be discounted or free, based on need,” Ms. Berton says.
Ms. Berton and Buoyant, working with Manhattan By Sail, have also embarked on another public-service project: a multi-year restoration of Shearwater, a Roaring 20s, blue-water ocean cruiser that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, and left service in 2023 (after many years based at North Cove). Rich with history, the vessel “weeps”—a nautical term for rust that emerges from metal embedded in her wooden hull, an artifact of taking fire from German submarines while on patrol in the Atlantic during World War Two, when she was requisitioned by the Coast Guard for military service. Shearwater is currently docked in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Basin.
“Shearwater needs a restoration of her deck and transom, which are still original material,” Ms. Berton explains. “The whole project will cost between $2.3 and $2.8 million, for which we are raising funds now. We hope to have Shearwater, which was launched in 1929, back on the water in time for her 100th anniversary.”