On the evening of August 31st, over 200 attendees gathered for a spectacular evening celebrating the induction of four extraordinary gentlemen into the America's Cup Hall of Fame.

Emceed for the 12th time by Hall of Fame inductee Gary Jobson, the evening featured videos highlighting the accomplishments of each inductee as well as introductions by the skippers of the four teams entered in the 36th America's Cup, Sir Ben Ainslie, Peter Burling, Terry Hutchinson and Max Sirena.

The Class of 2018 inductees are Syd Fischer (AUS), Ken McAlpine (AUS), John Marshall (USA) and Doug Peterson (USA).  Doug Peterson tragically passed away last year, and one of the evening's highlights was the acceptance speech given by Doug Peterson's daughters on behalf of their late father.

Opening  October 18th , The MIT Museum will presen t 

Lighter, Stronger, Faster: The Herreshoff  Legacy , an exhibition that celebrates  Captain Nat - one of MIT's first students - and the Herreshoff   Manufacturing Company. The exhibition will include exceptional models, art works, and historical documents associated with HMCo.'s breakthrough designs, together with a unique digital interactive. A number of artifacts and historic photos are on loan from the HMM collection for the exhibit. 

The exhibition is timed to coincide with the digital publication of the MIT Museum's entire Haffenreffer-Herreshoff collection, which consists of some 14,000 paper plans and 5,000 related artifacts including offset booklets, correspondence and corporate archives. The collection will be freely available for browsing online at high resolution and in color, granting unprecedented access to the HMCo. design archive. 

"MIT has been producing leaders in technology and innovation for more than 150 years, and it's wonderful for us to be able to bring to the public at last a fitting tribute to the life-work of one of our earliest and greatest innovators." said John Durant, The Mark R. Epstein (Class of 1963) Director of the MIT Museum. The exhibition is scheduled to run until 2020.

For more information, visit:  https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/herreshoff 

As the days cool and the sunlight wains, the Herreshoff School of Seamanship moves from the the rapid pace of summer camp to the the individual school programs, and begins gearing up for our annual boat building courses for high school students. This summer the museum hosted our best summer camp yet, with over 375 participants during the nine weeks of camp. They sailed daily on 10 keel boats with our dedicated staff of twelve sailing instructors lead by our head instructor Annie Kelly. Summer camp utilized our growing fleet of keel boats including our classic Herreshoff 12 1/2s. In addition our Instructor in Training program was a big success this year with twelve young people participating, all of them hopeful that one day they will be able to be a Herreshoff instructor!

This summer, The Herreshoff Marine Museum and The Rhode Island Marine Trade Association were again able to host a six-week boat building program for high school students in the museum's boat shop on Burnside St. The class was once again led by master boat builder Dan Shea, who coordinated the successful construction of a 18' Herreshoff Dory over the six weeks. The Dory was designed in 1917 by A. Sidney DeWolf for use on HMCo #323, a 112' Navy Steam Patrol Boat. 

The class was funded through Real Jobs RI, and, during the six weeks, the students developed skills in reading construction plans, lofting, joinery, and planking, as well as hand- and power- tool skills. In addition, students met with members of the marine trade community to hear first hand what it is like to work in the industry and about the skills employers are looking for in 21st century employees. 

The boat building continues this fall as the museum hosts students from Mt. Hope High School in two different boat building programs in the boat shop during the afternoon. These programs provide opportunities for up to 20 students to learn first hand about the exciting world of composites and traditional boat building, as well as learn about the opportunities in the industry here in Little Rhody!