The saying goes in New York Harbor, a barge can kill you, a tug can kill you, and the Shaolin Yacht Club, can kill you. Amusements aside, the Staten Island Ferry “ain’t nothin’ to fuck-wit.”
For its second act, the Sailing Collective is launching NYSC, an inspired sailor’s club in New York Harbor. A necessary adaptation to our new normal, this stateside venture is a dynamic pivot for the intrepid company.
NYSC brings adventure closer to home and introduces the sea to our fellow New Yorkers. Supporting the club’s academy courses, I’ll be teaching basic seamanship before the iconic cityscape all summer.
If club members learn anything of seamanship this season, it will be awareness. New York Harbor’s frenzied waterways mirror its city streets. Sharing the Hudson River with neighboring New Jersey, adds to the volume of waterway traffic, to say nothing of the garish jet skiing coterie.
Though NYSC borrows charming aesthetics from yesteryear, with a fleet of classic sailboats, the club itself is a departure from the Dickie Greenleaf set. Welcoming all manner of city folk seaside, NYSC is a progressive take on a timeless lifestyle.
Unofficially, the motto is that if you can reach - err survive - the MTA, you can sail. And there is something astutely modern in emerging from the subway to partake in the art of sail.
