South Street Seaport Museum Announces Pioneer's Sailing Season - Beginning 5/28

By: Jun. 05, 2018
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South Street Seaport Museum Announces Pioneer's Sailing Season - Beginning 5/28 The South Street Seaport Museum announces Pioneer's Sailing Season, which began on Monday, May 28, 2018. Daily Sails available at 7pm Wednesday - Friday and 1pm, 4pm, and 7pm Saturday - Sunday. (evening sails begin at 6:30 starting September 5, 2018). Tickets are $32 (Seniors 65+ & Children ages 0-12 $28). Tickets are available at http://southstreetseaportmuseum.org/sailnyharbor. Pioneer tickets include free admission to the Museum's exhibits.

Throughout the sailing season Pioneer also offers special 3 hour Family Ecology Sails where families and visitors can board the historic schooner and set sail past Governors Island for the fishing grounds of Bay Ridge. Guests will help set a trawl net and haul it in, bringing up a variety of creatures from blue crabs to flounder. Children and adults help raise the sails to continue the exploration the old fashioned way. While sailing past the Statue of Liberty families will learn about the sea creatures caught with the trawl, examine plankton through a view-scope, test the water to learn about our marine ecosystem. Schooner Pioneer is also available for charters throughout the sailing season. Charters sail within New York Harbor, one of the most fascinating harbors in the world and afford unparalleled views of the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the New York and New Jersey skylines, as well as a chance to witness all manner of vessels, from tugboats to cruise ships, as they perform their duties on the waterfront. Pioneer is the ideal vessel for private sails, group or company outings, and photo or film shoots! Your custom charter experience can be booked by emailing charters@seany.org.

In the days before paved roads, small coastal schooners such as Pioneer were the delivery trucks of their era, carrying various cargoes between coastal communities: lumber and stone from the islands of Maine, brick on the Hudson River, and oyster shell on the Chesapeake Bay. Almost all American cargo sloops and schooners were wood, but because she was built in what was then this country's center of iron shipbuilding, Pioneer had wrought-iron hull. She was the first of only two cargo sloops built of iron in this country, and is the only iron-hulled American merchant sailing vessel still in existence.

By 1930, when new owners moved her from the Delaware River to Massachusetts, she had been fitted with an engine, and was no longer using sails. In 1966 she was substantially rebuilt and turned into a sailing vessel once again. Today she plies the waters of NY Harbor carrying adults and children instead of cargo in her current role as a piece of "living history." Today Pioneer is an award winning sail training vessel teaching volunteers of all kinds, traditional maritime skills, and the art of tall ship sailing. Visitors can board Pioneer for 2-hour day and evening cruises, special programs, and charter experiences as she sails New York Harbor May through October.

The South Street Seaport Museum, located in the heart of the historic seaport district in New York City, preserves and interprets the history of New York as a great port city. Founded in 1967, and designated by Congress as America's National Maritime Museum, the Museum houses an extensive collection of works of art and artifacts, a maritime reference library, exhibition galleries and education spaces, working nineteenth century print shops, and an active fleet of historic vessels that all work to tell the story of "Where New York Begins."



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