Wednesdays in Red Hook – today featuring David Sharps

Welcome to ‘Wednesdays in Red Hook’, a new series that gives a close-up look into the hard work, unexpected encounters, and delightfully mundane moments that make up an average day in Red Hook.

For our second installment, we’re heading to the water’s edge in Red Hook, where Captain David Sharps and his wife Sarah Burd-Sharps have lived on the Lehigh Valley No. 79 barge for almost 31 years. The barge is not only David and Sarah’s home, but also a floating theater, the Waterfront Museum, and a maritime educational space for the community. The couple also cares for the surrounding Pier 41 waterfront garden. We followed David around for a day to see what it takes to keep a 112-year-old barge afloat.

12:30 a.m. While it’s not quite morning yet, David wakes up in the middle of the night for about an hour. He pulls out the New York Times app and reads through the latest headlines until he falls back asleep.

6:00 a.m. As usual, the passing ferries start to wake David and Sarah up. He calls it the “morning shake up” as the ferries’ wake rocks him … awake. He starts his day with a vanilla hazelnut coffee and a bagel with cheddar cheese. While he eats breakfast he plays the New York Times word game Connections. After finishing it, he rotates through sudoku, highlight reels from the latest NBA games, and Wordle. Today’s Wordle answer is “SNORE,” which he solves with just two guesses.

8:00 a.m. This past week David has been de-winterizing the barge. Today he’s focusing on draining the barge’s seven radiators and works with Sarah to pump the water out of them. He checks three water pumps before finding one that works, bloodying his knuckles in the process.

9:00 a.m. Like most jobs nowadays, even the caretaker of a barge has to respond to emails. David goes through a few of his new emails, some of which involve managing grants (the barge will need $600,000 worth of repairs next year), scheduling volunteers, responding to artist proposals, and confirming maintenance appointments.

10:15 a.m. Speaking of maintenance, the boiler repairmen arrive to clean the boilers. It’s been a hard winter and the boilers ran a lot, so they are in need of a good cleaning.

12:00 p.m. David and Sarah move a large planter box into their van. They found it outside of Hooked on Plants after the garden center closed. Sarah replanted the plants that were in it in the Waterfront Garden. Today David’s going to bring the planter to the Sullivan Street Community Garden.

12:20 p.m. David uses his red shopping cart, left behind by a film set, to transport his empty gasoline and kerosene tanks up to the barge. On his way, he runs into his friend Steve, who owns a wood shop nearby. Steve and his wife got married on the barge many years ago. Steve offers David more sawdust for the barge’s compost toilet.

12:30 p.m. After dropping the planter box off at the Sullivan Street Community Garden, David returns to the barge to start the process of lowering two of the radiators down into the hull of the ship to make more space for performances and events, like the upcoming Ferry Safety and Technology Conference.
To move the two 400 lb. radiators, he sets up a chain hoist just above the hatch and uses bowline knots with a rope to secure one of the radiators to the chain hoist. “A knot’s no good if you can’t untie it at the end,” David shares, “and you can tug a barge down the river with this knot and still untie it at the end.”
It takes about an hour and a half to move, secure, and safely lower the two radiators down into the bottom of the barge.

2:20 p.m. It’s lunch time. David makes himself a shake with almond milk, instant oats, banana, mango, and peanut butter. He’s been making himself this shake for years after hearing that oatmeal is good for lowering cholesterol.

2:30 p.m. David heads over to Flickinger Glassworks where he has all his packages sent. A refillable sprayer canister has arrived that he will use for rust protection on hand tools and the lawn mower.

2:40 p.m. David checks his emails again and sees he’s gotten an inquiry from hudsoncountyfacts.com. The blog’s writer is interested in learning more about when the Lehigh Valley No. 79 barge spent in Hoboken. David is only too happy to quickly respond and send over stories about the visits that his barge has made to Hoboken, including for the performance of On the Waterfront, a play set in Red Hook. (Marlon Brando starred in the movie adaptation of the play, which was filmed in Hoboken.)

3:00 p.m. David checks in on the public porta potty that sits just outside the Waterfront Garden to make sure the cleaning company did a thorough job during their regular appointment. Then David makes his daily rounds to remove trash and dog waste from around the garden. Afterwards, he heads over to the O’Connell Organization office to pick up the lawn mower that has been stored there all winter. David changes the oil and sharpens the blades. He is now ready for spring in the Waterfront Garden … or, as he calls it, “the meadow, because I have to mow the lawn.”

4:00 p.m. David cleans up the barge’s galley. “We have a 70-year-old dishwasher on here…me!” he jokes. “Well, almost 70,” he quickly adds. David puts away the equipment he used to move the radiators and tidies up to prepare for Thursday’s weekly open house hours on the barge.

4:30 p.m. David takes a quick nap to rest up for his Wednesday night basketball game.

6:15 p.m. Before heading out, David eats two cookies. Since high school, he has always found he plays better if he doesn’t have a full stomach – and he is rarely hungry after the game.

6:30 p.m. David has played Wednesday night basketball at a gym in Park Slope for over 15 years. Tonight his team plays 4 games, winning two and losing two.

9:50 p.m. On the way home, David stops by a friend’s house to pick up his sailboat’s outboard five horsepower motor that his friend kindly stored over the winter.

10:30 p.m. Home at last! David enjoys ending the day just as he started it – by catching up on current events on his New York Times app.

11:00 p.m. By now, David has drifted off to sleep.

Writer’s Note: I would have loved to weave in David’s past as a juggler and his life in Paris living on a barge, but did not find the right opportunity. Instead, I encourage you to ask David about “Serious Foolishness” next time you visit the Waterfront Museum.

Interested in learning more about Lehigh Valley No. 79 Barge and the Waterfront Museum? Sign up for their newsletter at waterfrontmuseum.org.