Local News
Local sailing centers turn a week of harbor crowds and logistical challenges into an unforgettable experience on the water.
The Parade of Sail, the opening event of Sail Boston 250, on Saturday, July 11, 2025. Barry Chin / The Boston Globe
While Sail Boston 250 has offered visitors the chance to tour ships in port, out on the harbor, hundreds of recreational boaters are viewing the ships amid the many commercial vessels doing business each day in Boston. They are all following a designated route into and throughout Boston Harbor each day. Meanwhile, the summer youth programs continue, so sailing instruction and camps have school-aged youths out each day learning to sail.
Courageous Sailing Center faced the logistical challenge of continuing its summer camp while two massive Tall Ships docked nearby on Pier 4. They are sharing the pier as thousands of daily visitors come and go. Although Courageous worked with the city’s port authorities for over a year to keep operations smooth, it was still uncertain how they would keep programs on track. They decided that the best plan was to head upriver this week in their 19-foot Rhodes19 sailboats.
“Adding two tall ships and thousands of people to the mix has made this week even more exciting than a typical week of summer youth programming on Pier 4,” said Jennifer Bodde, education director at Courageous Sailing Center. “After Monday, when the crowds on the pier and on the water made sailing impossible, we’ve been able to get our kids out sailing by towing boats along the traffic pattern and up the Mystic River, out of the fray.”
The instructors did not miss an opportunity, however, to give them a chance to see the ships in and around Boston Harbor.
“We’ve also been taking our students out on cruising boats, under power, to see all the ships, and they’ve had the opportunity to tour the Romanian ship Mircea, which is docked on our pier,” Bodde said. “Our staff has done an amazing job of rolling with the challenges, helping direct the crowds of visitors, and keeping everyone safe. It has been a fun experience for our kids.”
For the past few years, Sail Boston organizers have collaborated regularly with the U.S. Coast Guard and all state and city agencies that manage the busy waterways, according to David Choate, technical director at Sail Boston. This has enabled the harbor to maintain some semblance of normalcy as commercial ships still need to come and go each day.
“Sharing our harbor with the world for five days requires years of planning, trust, and adaptability,” Choate said. From the shipping and seafood industries to the delivery of fuel and other goods, “our harbor is crucial to our lives here in Boston.”
At Piers Park Sailing Center in East Boston, the instructors teach sailing using 23-foot Sonars and continue to venture into Boston Harbor and out to the Harbor Islands.
“It has been going great, and we have had 300 youths out on the water so far for instruction,” said Alex DeFranzo, 37, executive director of Piers Park Sailing Center who himself learned how to sail here as a 10-year-old.
“Our kids have had a great time seeing the ships and schooners and in fact two of the schooner captains doing charters this week learned to sail here,” he said.
DeFranzo noted that two of the schooners sailing in the harbor on charter business are captained by alumni of the center.
Esmeralda, from Chile, arrives in Boston Harbor as a crowd stands on the East Boston waterfront at LoPresti Park. – John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe
“We have always used the 23-foot Sonars as a smaller sailboat would be too risky out on Boston Harbor, which is constantly busy,” he said. “The port operators around the harbor are very well-connected, and the pilots meet with us each month. They have a huge presence out here, and this has been in the planning stages for a year. It takes a huge effort overall.”
“So many of our staff are excited, and it has been quite an event. Also, personally I have a passion for Boston. It has been incredible especially at sunset to see all these ships out here,” DeFranzo said. “The thing for me and what has been great is that it has created a unifying factor for all of us here in East Boston with both the Tall Ships and the World Cup.”
Community Boating Inc. on the Charles River has had staff at the tall ship’s education tent throughout this week while continuing their regular youth and adult programs at our boathouse on the Esplanade.
“From our perspective, the event has created a lot of curiosity about sailing, not just about the ships themselves, but about how people can actually get involved once the festival is over,” said Kate Ferris Richardson, executive director of Community Boating, Inc. She added that some of the tall ships’ crew are planning to come over to the Charles River to sail in the 15-foot dinghy boat called the Mercury.
“It is a fun reminder that a dinghy and a schooner work from the same basic principles of wind, physics, mechanics, and seamanship. The scale is different, but the fundamentals are the same,” Ferris Richardson said. “Further, sailing should not feel like something reserved for people who grew up around boats or already know how the sport works. Community Boating exists to make sailing welcoming and accessible to people of all ages, abilities, and financial means.”
Although it may seem out of reach to many youth sailing amid the tall ships this week in Boston, there is a saying that “the sea gets in your blood,” and it certainly did for experienced Tall Ship sailor David Gold, who just recently sailed from Boston to the Azores this past April on the 259-foot Clipper Stad Amsterdam. He began sailing in Swampscott, Mass., where he grew up. Over the course of his life, he has made three ocean voyages as crew on board a Tall Ship.
“The opportunity to gain experience is tremendous,” Gold said. “As a retiree or as a young person, the experience broadens the horizons of everyone. And, like our own sailing programs in Boston, or on board many of the small and large tall ships here today, being at sea does change a person.”
Gold recalls that when he left Boston this past spring on board the Clipper Stad Amsterdam, he had a lump in his throat.
“I was born in Boston and brought up on the North Shore. When you go to sea and leave your homeport, you think of the lives of past sailors and that you are leaving family behind. You wonder what challenges you are going to face at sea. There is excitement as you set a 90-degree east line for the Azores,” he said. “Over a day or two at sea, you learn the routine and you learn new and important skills that are imperative whether you are on a small sailboat or a clipper ship.
“On board a ship, you don’t talk about nationalities or politics, but instead you are all sailors,” Gold added. “Because there can be up to 36 sails on a tall ship, you have to work together to keep the sails in the direction you want to go.”
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