Hudson River Community Sailing

Last Thursday, Sail Academy Chelsea students celebrated the end of regular program with an expedition sail down to the Statue of Liberty! 🗽 thank you to all the staff and volunteers who made this wonderful trip such a great experience!

Sail Academy Chelsea graduation is this Thursday and we wanted to take a moment to thank a very important part of the program: our volunteers! So many volunteers make this program possible, from weekly sailing and boat building to career speakers to skippers for family events and trip days. Thank you to all of our youth program volunteers for enriching not just Sail Academy but HRCS at large!

We’re thrilled to share that we hosted our first Adaptive Sailing event of the season yesterday with .bronx at !
With the closure of Dyckman Marina, our team has spent close to two years searching for space to continue serving our middle school and adaptive sailing participants. We’re incredibly grateful to have found an interim home for our adaptive programming at Brooklyn Bridge Marina.
We also want to thank our adaptive sailors and our program and funding partners for their flexibility and support as we explored every possible lead for an interim programming location. Their patience and partnership helped ensure that participants could get back on the water this season.
Adaptive Sailing is more than a recreational program. It’s a community. Programs like these rely on long-term relationships and consistent opportunities to participate, making continuity especially important. We’re grateful to everyone who helped us keep these sails going this season.
Here’s to another season of building community, confidence, and connection on the water.

Last week, 10th-12th grade Sail Academy students took a trip across the Hudson (and back!) to visit the Cofferdam, also known as the Hudson River Ground Stabilization project! Part of the Gateway Hudson Tunnel Project, a massive interstate program to build a new railway tunnel under the Hudson River, HRGS is mixing cement into the riverbed to prepare it for tunneling. Students got to meet engineers and project managers on a very special tour led by the Gateway Development Commission and !

As we start to close out the school year, we’re celebrating two amazing outdoor learning adventures with our Inwood students!

This week, Sail Academy Inwood hosted its end of year “Sailabration,” a true collaboration between the Inwood and Chelsea sites that brought together students, staff, interns, and volunteers for a day of sailing, teamwork, learning, and fun. Students spent the day sailing, tying knots, pulling oyster traps, and building confidence on the water together. With the Dyckman Marina closed, this was an especially meaningful opportunity for many Inwood students to get out sailing this spring.

Last week, 5th and 6th graders from Amber Charter School celebrated their birdhouse projects with a trip to the New York Botanical Garden. Students explored the Thain Forest, listened to bird songs, spotted red winged blackbirds, blue jays, robins, and mourning doves, heard frogs in the Native Plant Garden, climbed to the overlook waterfall, and even saw a snapping turtle cross the path.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped make these experiences possible for our students. We’re ending the school year with curiosity, adventure, and joyful learning outdoors.

HRCS’s first racing series of the season is well underway! Our members participate in several series over the course of the next few months, racing on Monday and Tuesday nights. Here’s a look at last week’s races!

Join us for the 2026 Sail Academy Chelsea Graduation and Moving Up Ceremony! We’ll be celebrating another wonderful year with our students and honoring the achievements of our Class of 2026. Link in our bio to RSVP!

Thanks to the incredible support of our community, this year’s Dark ’n’ Stormy raised over $78,000 in support of Hudson River Community Sailing’s youth and adaptive programs.

A huge thank you to our amazing committee, our chair Seena, the staff and volunteers who brought the event to life, everyone who donated raffle prizes, purchased tickets, bid, gave, and showed up for our students and sailors.

Dark ’n’ Stormy is always a reminder of how many people believe in the power of access to the waterfront, hands-on learning, and the community built around sailing. We’re so grateful to celebrate alongside all of you. Full album from the event on Facebook. (📸 Bruno Rocha)

Earlier this month, we celebrated the blessing and launch of the Opti boats our students in Chelsea and Inwood built over the winter! Baby Shark, Catch My Drift, Lapras, and Maria — a new RIB generously donated by board member Michael Kurtz — officially launched into the Hudson.

Students also transformed the pier into a showcase of their work, sharing hands-on STEM projects with families and guests, including robotics demonstrations, marine debris research, and other environmental science projects developed throughout the season.

Thank you to all the families who attended, and to the staff, volunteers, and community members who make this event possible each year. And a special thank you to the Trust for supporting the event and bringing a face painter who helped make the day even more memorable for our students and families.