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After some last minute prep in New Haven, we took to the backroads for some slow and steady motoring.
It was the bike's inaugural trip pulling two people plus a loaded trailer and as it
turns out, a nine horsepower diesel engine can use a little help sometimes climbing hills.
We had to do some pushing but we made it safe and sound to new york
and everywhere we stopped people came up wondering what we're up to. We also happened
to find some biodiesel on the way before meeting up with the Hudson River Sloop
Clearwater in Croton on Hudson in New York.
The Clearwater is a historic wooden sailboat that travels up and down the
hudson taking school groups sailing.
when we showed up
we talked with Sloop captain nicholas rogers about his work.
Uh, my name is Nicholas Rogers.
I'm the senior captain of the sloop clearwater. We run education programs up and down the hudson
river and in new york harbor. The student's come onboard and we fish for a little bit.
We have a trawl net. We have a catch and release license with the DEC. So we trawl for a little bit, show
the folks that there are fish in the river, and the fish are healthy. You know,
there's plenty of oxygen in the water.
Um, and then we set the sail and then we sail around for a bit.
And the students rotate through five different educational stations. And uh... you know... six, seven years ago
or something we start teaching one of the stations about climate change and uh...
I was really surprised at how many schools basically asked us to not teach that station anymore.
Basically saying like, oh there's not enough information about this, or like
oh this is too hot of a topic or
for whatever reason. I was just like...
So then we stopped calling it the climate change station.
Cuz i think that that name scares some people. I don't know if they call it climate change but
you can call it whatever you want, but sea level rise is definitely you know, a part of it all.
you know, and like what do we do
basically with
the thousands of miles of shoreline in new york city? You know, the Hudson River
is sea level; it is the sea. It's an estuary from from New York City to the dam up in Troy.
So if the water of the sea's gonna rise, then it's gonna rise right here in
Croton Point and it's gonna rise up in Saugerties and up in Albany.
We've been wintering the Boat in Saugerties for the past thirty years and um...
So I know a lot of folks that have houses down the river, keep boats down on the river
there in Saugerties and um...
you know they said that last year's storm irene was like oh the hundred year flood.
And then a bunch of the guys were just like, well why is this the hundred year flood and the one that happened
two years ago is not the hundred year flood?
And just like, actually come to think of it
we've had more floods in the past ten years...
uh...
than we did the...you know,
as far as i can remember before that. You know and so
I just don't understand how you can have so many hundred year floods in the span of ten years. [laughs]
Could you talk a little bit about your experience on the boat during hurricane irene?
We were actually down in the city where
there was all sorts of
uh... precautions I mean. Everybody was alright we've gotta get upriver
for the storm 'cause it's you know further away from the the the sea swell
and uh... we went to Saugerties, uh to the town dock there and
the uh... the storm surge hit at the same time as a high tide
so...
everybody got flooded out you know.
We were on the outside of the turn
so all the water was on the inside, you know
trees, logs, boats, houses were all coming down wiping out the docks on the
other side of the creek but...
houses washed away and
towns destroyed and... you know, there debating whether or not to build whole towns back.
Yeah, it's just like...
these quaint, uh catskill towns you know
just had like a little bubbling brook you know through their main street, you know nice place
to spend the summer, you know
that creek turned into 5 feet of water in...
in the stores and houses on main street.
You know i
think that someday i might want to like
own my own boat and sail around the world and have a family on it and
I just feel like if
it's gonna be really
bad in terms of how often the storms are gonna
come through and
then like that's probably not what i want to do with a family you know...so it's just like... I don't know...
The Clearwater crew was crazy enough to let us bring the motorcycle on board for a sail down the river.
[Engine noise and cheers]
That went so much smoother than i thought it would Erik! [laughs]
It was a beautiful day for sailing and while on board we talked with
Jocelyn Bertovich, an educator on the sloop.
As one of the educators I essentially just manage the education program onboard
and then I coordinate stuff with teachers and students. And then I sing a lot of songs
about fish. That's pretty much what I do
Can you relate to us the story of your experience with hurricane irene?
For all the times I've been on board when like' squalls have come or there's been
some kind of crazy storm, this was like really calm
cause we were really well prepared.
uh... but the rest of the boats in the creek were not, I mean, we sat from
you know for those like few days we just watched like
uh... a creek that usually barely like flows just with the changing of the tide was
i'd say a class three rapid
so there was like tree trunks like flying you know
and we're on like the bend of the creek so we're sitting in this little nook
so the fast water's out here
and there's like trees going by
uh... tables going by, like, dolls uh, docks, all kind of weird stuff...just,
everything was just a wreck and the water level
rose so high that you had to...
at one point in time, the shrouds, um on the boat were like
getting up into the trees so we had to start cutting tree branches down just so that the boat
could keep going higher.
Yeah, the guys that work at Lynch's Marina said they'd never seen anything like that.
I'd never seen anything like that.
To see like that much rain was incredible.
Wondering what the first thing that comes to mind is when you hear the words climate change?
Um, well the first thing that came to my mind is how
some, you know some people call it global warming and some people call it climate change
um...
how a lot of these... a lot of them are just like loaded words and they're able to
you know, get people to feel a certain way just by using these words even if they don't necessarily
understand the science behind it. Ninety nine percent scientists agree that this is
happening so it's always amazing um...
to me...
how easily swayed people can be or convinced uh... otherwise. A lot of times
like you know politicians have an agenda and corporations have an agenda and
i feel like there's a lot of people
in this country unfortunately who
don't even... they're like disconnected and i, i don't know if it's all education but
i think that education would
help them become reconnected to
i don't know some,
ambiguous truth that's out there.
We had a great sail on the Clearwater
and after our trip across Haverstraw Bay and under the Tappan Zee Bridge,
they dropped us off in Alpine, New Jersey
and waved goodbye as they headed out for their daily education sails.