After forming a partnership last October with Willowell, a nonprofit organization that educates people about the environment and the arts (Willowell serves as VSFP’s fiscal sponsor), Andrus raised $16,400 in a Kickstarter campaign. An additional $17,000 was raised from private foundations and miscellaneous donations, including $10,000 from the band Phish. Construction on Ceres started in March.
“It takes a lot of skill to build a bent plank on a frame for a traditional fishing boat,” he said. In contrast, Ceres “is where boat-building meets house carpentry.” Made of lumber and plywood, the flat-bottomed boat relies on a pair of leeboards for stability. “Cargo capacity trumps speed, as does economy of construction,” Andrus said. Several riggers “showed up” at just the right time to rig the boat.
Because timeliness is important for the smooth operation of her maiden voyage, Ceres will be fitted with a four-cycle outboard motor, although “In the long run, we want to have a delivery system that’s schedule-fluid” and completely carbon free. The preorder service enables the crew to keep in close contact with customers about the local arrival times, he added. “We’re where high-tech meets low. We’ll have a smartphone on the boat that can alert people via my blog about the hours we’ll be available. We’re also emitting Tweets and pictures and bird sightings.” The pricing of the food items will be competitive, he added.
Another nonprofit, Greenhorns, which has an office in Hudson, is organizing the dockside activities, and Steve Schwartz, an experienced Hudson River captain, will be taking over the rudder from Andrus once the boat enters the river. Ceres left Shoreham, Vermont on October 7 and entered the canal system a day later. After three days in the canal, it will enter the Hudson at Troy on October 11. By October 27 it will in New York City, with the crew attending the New Amsterdam Farmers’ Market in lower Manhattan that morning, followed by its final stop at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Once back in Vermont, the boat will be “put back on wheels and rolled back under a pole barn on my farm,” said Andrus.
“The challenges have shifted since Pete Seeger’s vision of encouraging people to connect with the Hudson River around stewardship and fighting pollution,” Andrus said. “Nay-sayers say this will never be viable because the labor costs will torpedo the savings in fuel consumption; but maybe not. We’re not really competing head-to-head with the trucking industry. We’re transporters, but also petty merchants. Most truckers are not operating a general store out of the back of their truck. We’re performing two services at once, plus selling the intangibles of the project.”
He hopes that the Vermont Sail Freight Project will be self-sustaining in two years. In the meantime, “Spending time on a slow-moving boat on the river is inherently enriching and fun and soothing and good for the soul, in the way driving a semi on the Interstate is not.”
Sail-powered barge Ceres, Thursday, October 17, 12 noon-2 p.m., Hudson River Maritime Museum, 50 Rondout Landing, Kingston; www.vermontsailfreightproject.org.The Ceres will also visit Poughkeepsie on October 17; Newburgh on October 19; and Beacon on October 20.
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