Floating Classroom (Grades 2-College)
3 hour sails

SoundWaters is an eighty-foot schooner that serves as our Floating Classroom on Long Island Sound. The schooner provides a platform for three-hour explorations of Long Island Sound's ecology and biology. Aboard the schooner, students help raise the sails, haul in a trawl net, and examine first hand the rich diversity of life that exists beneath the waves.

The Floating Classroom experience includes four stations:

Plankton Collect and observe live planktonic organisms and observe them through hand-held microscopes.
Touch Tank Touch, see, smell and learn about fish, crabs and other bottom dwelling organisms hauled up in our trawl net.
Water Quality Younger students use a fun, hands-on model to reveal pollution sources and groundwater contamination. Older students use scientific instruments to measure and discuss the salinity, dissolved oxygen, and pH of the water in Long Island Sound.
Salt Marsh Examine a living salt marsh teeming with organisms aboard the schooner. Learn the importance of salt marshes in the LIS ecosystem.

Customize your Floating Classroom experience by substituting any of the following stations:

Weather Learn how weather forms and how it affects our environment.
Birds Use binoculars to search for coastal birds and observe their adaptations.
Simple Machines Use pulleys or block and tackle to set the sails and test the benefits of mechanical advantage.
Buoyancy Discover why our 32-ton steel boat floats and unravel Archimedes Principle.
Navigation Plot a course, read a compass, and locate the Schooner's position on a nautical chart.
Sail Theory Determine how the Schooner moves through the water as you investigate Bernoulli's Principle.

SoundWaters homeport is Brewer Yacht Haven West in Stamford, CT easily accessible from I-95. SoundWaters can also operate out of other ports including Greenwich, Mamaroneck, Port Washington, Oyster Bay, and Port Jefferson.

SoundWaters is U.S. Coast Guard-certified to carry up to 42 passengers. The Captain is licensed by the Coast Guard, and the crew are trained professional sailors and educators.

Reservations

Price: $1,095 per 3-hour sail, max 42 people.
Transportation to Brewer's Yacht Marina is not covered in the above cost.

Floating Classroom Application

Click here for directions to the Schooner

For more information please contact: Susan Phillips (203)-406-3319

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