On a clear spring morning, the Rondout comes back to life—masts knocking lightly in the marina, a breeze moving upriver, the slow churn of working boats threading past the lighthouse. At the Hudson River Maritime Museum, that seasonal shift isn’t just atmospheric; it’s operational. In May, the museum’s high school sailing program launches for the first time, marking a new chapter in a decade-long effort to put Hudson Valley residents—especially young ones—on the water.
The Sailing School at HRMM began modestly in 2017, with a two-week pilot program serving just 24 students. For Jody Sterling, director of the Sailing School, the origin story is both personal and communal. A lifelong sailor and educator, she returned to the sport in midlife and found herself transformed by a 2014 women’s sailing conference. “I was completely changed by that experience,” she recalls, describing the sense of connection and possibility she felt among a new generation of skilled women sailors.
That spark led to Kingston’s own Riverport Women’s Sailing Conference—and, soon after, an invitation from Lisa Cline, HRMM’s executive director to build something more permanent. “Lifelong sailor, lifelong educator—I think I should do this,” Sterling says.
Ten years on, the numbers tell one story: more than 350 students annually, a fleet of 22 boats, and a robust roster of youth and adult programs. But the deeper narrative is about what happens when young people are given real responsibility in a real environment.
“Sailing teaches so many things—independence and self-reliance, decision-making, dealing with challenges, teamwork,” Sterling says. “There are so few opportunities for young people today to interact with the world in an independent way, to make decisions and make mistakes and deal with the consequences.”
That ethos—hands-on, lightly supervised, and intentionally “retro”—has shaped the school’s identity. Students wear life jackets and are carefully monitored, but they are also expected to figure things out. The results can be lasting: six graduates of that first cohort have returned as certified instructors, part of a growing internal pipeline that speaks to the program’s long-term impact.
If the school’s pedagogy looks backward in some ways, its programming has steadily expanded outward. What began as a straightforward sailing curriculum has evolved into a broader educational ecosystem that reflects the museum itself. Today, HRMM encompasses not just sailing, but a woodworking school, museum education programs, and Solaris, a solar-powered tour boat that doubles as a floating classroom.
That convergence is most fully expressed in Voyager Camp, a hybrid program that blends sailing with boatbuilding, woodworking, and STEAM-based learning. Each week revolves around a theme—ecology, navigation, communication—approached from multiple angles across the museum’s “four schools.” It’s an ambitious synthesis born partly of necessity. “With the increasingly hot summers, students were suffering from heat exhaustion,” Sterling notes. Expanding the program created both flexibility and depth.
The Hudson River itself remains the central teacher. Unlike the placid lakes where many beginners learn, the Hudson is a working river, with currents, tides, and commercial traffic that demand attention. Students learn to read buoys, anticipate barges, and navigate shifting conditions. “You can have a nice breeze, but if you’re trying to sail against the current, you’re going to have a lot of difficulty,” Sterling says. The payoff is confidence: “If you can learn to sail well on the Hudson, you can sail well anywhere.”
The river also reshapes perception. Many families arrive assuming the Hudson is too polluted for recreation. They leave with a more nuanced understanding, informed by the work of partner organizations like Riverkeeper and Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, and by their own experience on the water.
The new high school sailing program builds on that foundation. Launching May 14 as an after-school series, it offers older students a chance to deepen their skills beyond the one- or two-week summer model. It also introduces a social dimension, bringing together teens from Ulster and Dutchess counties through a partnership with Culture Connect. The goal is not just to create better sailors, but to foster connection across communities.
Accessibility, Sterling emphasizes, is central to the mission. “Sailing has a history of being very elitist,” she says. “We want to make sailing as accessible as possible.” Scholarships for youth programs, free “Adventure Sail” days for girls, and partnerships with community organizations are all part of that effort to broaden who feels welcome on the water.
Meanwhile, the school’s adult offerings provide multiple entry points, from a two-hour “First Sail” introduction aboard a historic catboat to a 21-hour US Sailing certification course. It’s a continuum that mirrors the museum itself: part historical archive, part educational hub, part living laboratory.
As the Sailing School enters its second decade, its success can be measured not just in enrollment or certifications, but in who sees the river as theirs. On the Rondout, where industry once dominated and access was limited, a new generation is learning to read the wind, the current, and each other.
