American Star Invitational Hudson River Race

New York, NY —

Later this morning twelve groups of crew teams will race across the Hudson River from Manhattan to New Jersey and back in a re-enactment of an historic race. It was in 1824 when small boats, called Whitehalls, were raced across a four mile course in an event known as the American Star Invitational. WNYC’s Richard Hake met up for a boat ride with a group practicing and keeping the tradition alive.

REPORTER: 22-year-old Johann Ovalle, came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 11 and now lives in Inwood. In high school he joined the crew team and today he acts as the coach and coxswain of the traditional 25-foot wooden boat with four of us as rowers.

REPORTER: Freshman, Gene Robert, gives us advice for getting into one of these boats.

ROBERT: That’s the first thing that you have to know when you’re rowing. You have to keep yourself inside the boat.

REPORTER: The boats, also called gigs, are all hand made by students and volunteers and are vibrantly painted, each with its own design and color scheme. The group, Floating the Apple, which is trying to restore access onto urban waterways, provides the boat house and supervision for the students.

REPORTER: As the sun sets over New Jersey, we move the oars through the icy Hudson in a cove near Houston Street. Ovalle points out the course for the different heats in the American Star Invitational, including the final one mile race from Pier 40 to Hoboken and back. He also takes pride in the boat that he helped build in the traditional way.

OVALLE: Yeah, it’s still standing so I guess we did a good job. It’s like you ask people, like what have they done and they’re like, yeah, I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But have you really done something or made something out something. So this is a perfect example here that you get to do something that you can use. You can actually use something that you made.

REPORTER: What’s amazing is the rowers act just like professionals on the water; yet they are high school students who joke and fool around...like when ovalle brings the gig back into the boathouse and the crew finds a microphone and loudspeaker that will be used for Saturday’s race.

OVALLE: So what we do usually after we row, we come out and we wipe it down and clean it and we take everything out just to see if there’s any cracks or lost items or anything like that. And also so it looks nice for the crew that’s going to go out. HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME. HELLO, HELLO, HELLO. HI!

REPORTER: Alana Shatain is one of the senior members of the crew and can’t swim, but that doesn’t stop her from being out on the water. She’s looking forward to her seventh race.

SHATAIN: I’m nervous, excited, uh different words. I’m just exciting mainly. I never know what the turnout will be if I could win or lose or just finish at the last minute so I’m pretty excited. And I’m really energized.

REPORTER: The Floating the Apple Boathouse on Pier 40 looks like a workshop with areas for tools and half finished Whitehall boats. Some eight gigs, with American Flags at their sterns, sit on mini-trailers and will all be used in the race. Ovalle says it takes about four months to build the boats and they also serve as a history lesson.

OVALLE: These boats were usable back in the days kind of like the ferries, how they take people to New Jersey, The Bronx, Brooklyn. These boats were used for that and when big ships used to come, they used to unload the equipment and put it into these boats and these boats would go through the harbor and ship it to other people and stuff like that.

REPORTER: The only thing mechanical about these boats is the electric crane that hoists them into the water.

The coast guard normally limits row boats in the Hudson during this time of year, but special permission is granted for the American Star race.

The organizers want to keep the December date as close as possible to the original December 9th, 1824 race. That was between an English gig called the dart against what’s believed to be the first American-built craft called the American Star. Some 50-thousand spectators lined the shore to cheer the American boat to victory. The crowds at this years race aren’t expected to be that big, but the weather will probably be similar, which the teams are prepared for. Ask Michelle Samora from the Bronx, who’s been rowing for only two months.

SAMORA: It’s going to be cold now. The water looks cold….I’m gonna freeze, but it’s going to be ok because I like the water.

REPORTER: It takes the teams between ten and twelve minutes to row to New Jersey and back.