Four tickets to a sail on the schooner Pioneer during the 2017 sailing season, which will begin Memorial Day weekend. Set out into the New York Harbor from the South Street Seaport Museum.

In the days before paved roads, small coastal schooners like the Pioneer were the delivery trucks of their era, carrying cargo between coastal communities: lumber and stone from the islands of Maine, brick on the Hudson River, and oyster shells 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, the Pioneer has a 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. 

Today, the 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 the Pioneer for 2-hour day and evening cruises as she sails New York Harbor May through October.

Location: South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton Street, New York, NY 10038