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Home Port
Long Island’s Huntington Bay
can be a boater’s perfect base
of operations, with its sheltered
waters, sandy beaches and more
than one comfy harbor to visit.
Sheltered from the Sound to the north,
Huntington Bay is a popular boating area on
Long Island’s North Shore.
48
Offshore | October 2006
by Frances Cerra Whittelse y
photog raphs by Thaddeus Kubis
O
n days when wind and tide pile up the waves
in Long Island Sound, I’m always glad to see
the smokestacks of the Northport power plant
get larger on the horizon. The sight of those
four towering red-and-white-striped stacks means we will shortly be back in the gentle waters of Huntington Bay. We’ll be protected by the hillsides of Lloyd Neck and Eatons Neck Point, treecovered and deep green until they finish in continuous sandy
beaches. In front of us will be the wide ease of Huntington Bay,
with no ferries or commercial shipping to dodge, just a few lobster pots. I sigh, relax, and often sit out on one of the bows of
Great White, our Atlantic 46 sailing catamaran, to take in the
familiar scenery.
It has been almost 25 years since my husband, Harry, and I
sailed our first boat on the bay. A 36-foot Magregor catamaran, it
accelerated in the wind like a car with the gas pedal tromped down,
spoiling us forever for slow sailing. We traded the Magregor for
what everyone referred to as “the pink trimaran,” a Condor 40 that
we had whimsically decided to paint the color of raspberry sherbet.
It was beautiful for a few years. Who knew it would fade to pink?
Now, we keep our conservatively painted white catamaran on
the outer edge of the mooring field in Northport Harbor. It is one
Offshore | October 2006
49
for the angler
Flounder, stripers, bluefish and blackfish keep
anglers busy in Huntington Bay and the Sound.
by Tom Schlichter
T
Tom Richardson
he busy waters
of Huntington
Harbor and
adjacent Long Island
Sound offer many piscatorial possibilities.
The season begins
with winter flounder, Big stripers in the 20- to 40-pound range
are available through November.
which can be taken
on mussel and worm
baits through April. Probe the 12- to 15-foot holes inside Lloyd Harbor, Centerport Harbor and around Duck Island as the season begins,
then slide toward 6 to 10 feet of water as May approaches. It’s tough
to catch a limit, but you can usually pick up enough fish for dinner.
“Stripers arrive around May 8,” says Capt. Jimmy Schneider, skipper
of the Huntington-based James-Joseph fishing fleet. “Live-line a bunker
or work poppers around the docks and shoreline structure inside the
harbor and you can take fish over the 20-pound mark. In the Sound,
drop bunker chunks right on the bottom in 12 to 30 feet of water off
any rocky beach or point. Try your luck right in front of Huntington Harbor or at Target Rock. Most of the bass run from 12 to 20 pounds, but
there are some 30-, 40- and even 50-pounders in this area.”
By July 4, warming waters drive most of the stripers into 30 to 50
feet of water in the Sound. “At that point,” Schneider notes, “the bass
set up in the rips inside the Eatons Neck triangle, formed by the construction buoy, buoy 13 and buoy 11B.” Tempt these fish with bunker
chunks or whole sandworms fished on a three-way rig. Big bluefish
up to 18 pounds mix with the bass from mid-July through the fall,
often exploding on bunker schools inside the harbor and providing
spectacular topwater action on blue or yellow pencil poppers.
Love fluke? Summer flatties up to 4 pounds are relatively numerous in June, July and August, with a smattering of 6- to 8-pounders
caught each year. Fish the shallow water around Sand City in June
with 1⁄2- to 1-ounce white bucktails tipped with spearing. As the
water warms, move out to the open Sound. Fish the ebb tide in early
summer and the flood during hot weather.
“The best action with mid-summer fluke comes from deep water
in the open Sound,” advises Schneider. “During July and August, concentrate your efforts in the 40- to 80-foot depths.”
While summer and spring fishing are great, fall can be spectacular.
The bass and blues inside the Eatons Neck triangle will smack diamond jigs, poppers, live bunker and bunker chunks with abandon.
Blackfish topping 10 pounds invade the rocky shallows and patrol
underwater ledges in search of green and calico crabs, while pods of
false albacore will take small metal spoons or 3- to 4-inch sparse,
white streamer flies. The tiny tunas vanish by mid-October, but the
bass, blues and blackfish will hang out through Thanksgiving if the
weather remains mild.
50
Offshore | October 2006
Above: Eagle’s Nest, once the tiled-roofed mansion of William K.
Vanderbilt and now a museum, dominates a hillside above Centerport’s
village and harbor.
Opposite page, top: Once the site of a sand-mining operation, the island
of Sand City is now a popular beach.
Opposite page, center: Seymour’s Boatyard is the lone survivor from
Northport’s long history of shipbuilding and maritime industry.
of several harbors that, with Northport Bay, make up the complex
that locals generally refer to, simply, as “the bay.” Through these
years of sailing and socializing with friends and members of the
Northport Yacht Club, the bay has become as familiar to me as the
streets around my home. This is my home port.
Arguably one of the most inviting boating destinations not just
in the Northeast, but also anywhere in the country, the bay is a
nautical playground, home to thousands of pleasure boats. Many
never venture into the Sound at all. There are more than four nautical miles of usually placid water running east to west. Like a large
but salty lake, with only a few shallows and rocks to avoid, the bay
is perfect for sailing, waterskiing, zooming in personal watercraft,
swimming, fishing, spending the night in tranquility or partying at
a raft-up with friends.
Onshore, visitors find a full array of marine services and downtowns with free summer concerts, museums and galleries. The main
streets of Northport and Huntington have escaped almost entirely
the spread of chain stores and restaurants. Instead, second-, thirdand even fourth-generation entrepreneurs give the business areas a
genuine small-town feeling of deep roots and commitment.
“Compared to other destinations, I’d give it a 10,” said Ed
Flanders, owner of Just Coastin’, a Bayliner 34 out of Stamford,
Connecticut, that was tied up at the Northport Village Dock on
a bright Sunday last July. “The only downside is that this isn’t
a floating dock, so you have to adjust the lines with the tide.”
J
ust 100 yards up Main Street from where Flanders was tied up
at the Northport Village Dock, a parade of people leave the
Northport Sweet Shop smiling and licking their ice-cream
cones. Some also stay inside to eat, and behind the grill is likely to
be Pete Panarites. He grew up beside the bay, and saw Northport
go through hard times when the Sweet Shop was the only restau-
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rant in town. He’s the village mayor now, but he still spends most
of his time in the shop, which his father founded in 1929.
“We have a boater-friendly policy on the dock,” he said, as he
flipped an omelet. “Our harbor and dock are great assets. They
draw a lot of boaters who bring money into the community, so we
want to encourage that.”
At the dock, “boater-friendly” means free water and electricity
hookups, no charge to tie up for any stretch of time during the day
(first come, first served), and a dockmaster who helps boaters like
Flanders adjust their lines as the tide changes. Many boaters opt to
anchor in Northport Bay, and for them the village provides multiple dinghy docks.
Once ashore, boaters can literally walk to Main Street in a
minute. Lined up for their pleasure are pubs, seafood and ethnic
restaurants, gourmet delicatessens, crafts shops, art galleries and
clothing stores. The village park, adjacent to the dock, has a
quaint band shell where free concerts are performed regularly
throughout the summer.
History buffs and fans of nineteenth-century architecture particularly appreciate Northport. Together with much more land
stretching east, Northport was purchased from the Mattinecock
Indians in 1656. By the nineteenth century, the bay had brought
wealth to shipbuilders and captains, as well as oyster barons. They
built grand homes in Queen Anne and Victorian styles, many of
which have been preserved along Bayview Avenue, the narrow
street that runs beside the village park. One of the finest examples,
a circa-1885 Victorian, is home to Seymour’s Boatyard, the only
survivor of Northport’s shipbuilding era.
Northport Village might not have the polish and manicured look
of upscale New England towns like Essex, Connecticut, but there is
plenty of wealth in Northport—as the waterfront homes obviously
show. The village also has a mix of housing that allows working peo-
Nautical miles
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Offshore | October 2006
51
ple to live here. Northport is a living village, not a historical re-creation stuck in time to attract tourists. To me, that is a virtue.
O
Top: Workboats cluster around a float at the town dock in busy
Huntington Harbor.
Middle: Huntington’s Main Street has kept its old-fashioned flavor.
Bottom: Huntington Harbor Lighthouse marks the entrances to
Huntington and Lloyd Harbors.
52
ne of the great things about the bay is that it is not one
boating destination but several. Turn west when you pass
through the bay, instead of east to Northport, and you’ll
see the Huntington Harbor Lighthouse, a small stone castle that
resembles a chess piece. Leave it to port and you’ll be in Lloyd
Harbor, a lovely place to anchor and watch birds, with no commercial development on its shores. Leave the lighthouse to starboard and you will enter Huntington Harbor, S-shaped, narrow
and almost filled from shore to shore with moored boats.
Marinas crowd Huntington Harbor’s dead end, while individual stores and small shopping centers line the side streets. In one
is a small restaurant run by another man who also grew up beside
the bay and has stayed put. Known to everyone as “TK,” he is a
Knutson, but he won’t tell anyone what the “T” stands for.
From the time he was 8, TK played in Huntington Bay. He sailed
Sunfish and Shields, swam in shallow ponds that warmed up early
in the season and patiently waited for his three-horse outboard to
propel his dinghy out to Sand City, the abandoned site of a sandmining operation. There he and his friends played in the tunnels
where the sand was once washed before being shipped east and
used to build the skyscrapers of Manhattan. TK is a grandson of
the founder of the Knutson shipyard and marina. At its peak, the
yard employed 500 workers who built landing craft, sub chasers
and other naval vessels in Huntington Harbor.
“We built our last boat of any kind in 1973,” said TK, who has
been running the restaurant TK’s Galley for 27 years. On the walls
hang photos of Knutson boats and views of the harbor as it was in
the early and mid-twentieth century. “Some of the people who
used to work at the yard come in every so often with their grandchildren to check out the old pictures,” said TK, his graying blonde
continued on page 83
Offshore | October 2006
Huntington Bay
at a Glance
Getting There
On the North Shore of Long Island, Huntington Bay is about 33 miles
northeast of Manhattan and 11 miles almost due south of Stamford,
Connecticut. If coming from the west, head southeast into the bay from
flashing green buoy “15”. From the east, enter the bay at flashing green
buoy “11B” and head southwest. Once inside the bay, follow the buoys
to port to enter Northport Bay and Northport Harbor. Follow the buoys
to starboard to enter Lloyd and Huntington Harbors. Lloyd Harbor is to
starboard of the Huntington Harbor Lighthouse, while Huntington Harbor is to port of the lighthouse. Use NOAA chart 12364.
Dockage and Moorings
For moorings in Huntington Harbor, contact Coney’s Marine (631-4213366, www.coneys.com) or Willis Marine Center (631-421-3400,
www.willismarine.com). Knutson’s Yacht Haven Marina (631-673-0700)
has limited dock space and some moorings for transients. West Shore
Marina (631-427-3444) has extensive dock space, a swimming pool,
picnic area and showers.
In Northport you can tie up free during the day on a first-come,
first-served basis at the Northport Village Dock; electricity and water
are also free. After 7 p.m. the fee is $2/foot. For a mooring with launch
service, make a reservation at Seymour’s Boatyard (631-261-6574,
www.seymoursboatyard.com). Seymour’s has gas and diesel. The yard
can haul boats up to 50 tons.
Anchorages
Eaton’s Neck Basin is a sheltered anchorage just south of the Eaton’s
Neck Lighthouse after you round the point. Another is at Sand City
Island on the east side of West Beach. In Northport Bay, you can anchor
northeast or northwest of the entrance to the mooring field. Or, for a
much quieter night, tuck your boat in close to the shore to the east of
Duck Island. The closest anchorage to Huntington Harbor is in Lloyd
Harbor, to the west of the Huntington Lighthouse.
Attractions and Diversions
In Huntington, the nonprofit Cinema Arts Centre (631-423-3456)
screens American and foreign film gems. A Summer Arts Festival
(631-271-8423), a free series of outdoor performances in Heckscher
Park, runs from late June into late August. Shows start at 8:30 every
night, except for Tuesday children’s shows, which begin at 7:30. Inside
the park you’ll also find the Heckscher Art Museum (631-351-3250;
www.heckscher.org). The Huntington Arts Council (631-271-8423;
www.huntingtonarts.org) has changing exhibits of paintings, sculptures and drawings, all for sale, in its free Petite Gallery. Huntington’s
Inter-Media Art Center (631-549-2787; www.imac.org) features live
concerts.
In Northport there are free band concerts, musical performances or
dancing at the Band Shell in the village park at the foot of Main Street
almost every Thursday and Friday evening throughout the summer.
For a look back at Northport’s past, visit the Northport Historical
Society & Museum (631-757-9859; www.northporthistorical.org). Onehour guided walking tours are offered every third Sunday of the
month beginning at 1:30 p.m.; cost is $4. The museum is open Tuesday
This planetarium is part of the facilities open to the public in
Centerport on the grounds of the former Vanderbilt mansion.
through Sunday from 1 to 4:30 p.m.; suggested donation, $2. It’s also
worth the taxi fare to reach the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium in
nearby Centerport (631-854-5555; www.vanderbiltmuseum.org) on the
west shore of Northport Harbor. This estate features William K. Vanderbilt III’s impressive collections, as well as his 24-room, fully-furnished
mansion; a marine museum; and a 60-foot planetarium with sky and
laser shows. The mansion is open every day except Monday from noon
to 5 p.m. Call for times and dates of planetarium shows and special
events. To explore the shallows and bird sanctuary at the south end of
Northport Bay, you can rent a kayak at Glacier Bay Sports in Northport
(631-262-9116; www.glacierbaysports.com).
Accommodations and Dining
There are no hotels near Huntington Bay. Two bed-and-breakfasts in
the area are Centerport Harbor Bed & Breakfast (631-754-1730), about
15 minutes from the foot of Huntington Bay, and Carr Bed & Breakfast
in Northport (631-757-1625), close to Main Street.
In contrast to the sparse accommodations, the area offers all sorts
of dining. In Huntington, on the east side of Huntington Harbor at its
south end, are Aix en-Provence (631-549-3338, www.aixli.com) and the
Shamrock (631-427-4221). TK’s Galley (631-351-8666), an unofficial
museum of local nautical history, has good sandwiches, hearty breakfasts and satisfying selections that won’t break the bank.
In Northport, within 100 yards of the dinghy dock at the foot of
Main Street, are Skipper’s Pub (631-261-3589; www.skipperspub.com)
and the Sea Shanty (631-261-8538; www.seashanty.com), along with
Maroni’s (631-757-4500; www.maronicuisine.com), with takeout Italian
food served in cast-iron pots. Get a taste of Northport’s history—and
good food—at Tim’s Shipwreck Diner (631-754-1797). At Bayview
Bistro (631-262-9744; www.bayviewbistro.com) you can dine outdoors
on prime steak or lobster. For homemade ice cream, try the Northport
Sweet Shop (631-754-9679).
Provisions
In Huntington, a King Kullen Supermarket is just a quarter-mile south
on Route 110 from the south end of Huntington Harbor. In Northport,
Main Street offers delicatessens and takeout restaurants.
Getting Around
In Huntington, call Orange & White Taxi Service (631-271-3600). In
Northport, call (631-261-0235).
—F. C. W.
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53
Home Port
continued from page 53
hair tied in a ponytail beneath a captain’s
cap. “It was fantastic, beautiful, growing
up here—and it still us. There are just a lot
more boats, and the water is cleaner.”
V
isiting Huntington Harbor is not as
easy as going to Northport.
Transient moorings and dock
space are available, but there is virtually
no room for anchoring. Once ashore at
the bottom of the harbor, you’ll find a topnotch world of culture and shopping only
a mile away. Founded in 1653,
Huntington bills itself, with a certain justification, as “The Little Apple,” Long
Island’s cultural capital.
Along the downtown stretches of
Main Street and New York Avenue, bars
and cafés stay open late with bands and
soloists sending their music into the
sweet summer air from outdoor sitting
areas. There’s a multi-screen movie
house with the usual commercial offerings, but there is also an art cinema and
an arts theater featuring live jazz, blues
and other performers. Art galleries, fine
restaurants and upscale stores also
abound.
In town-owned Heckscher Park you’ll
find a significant museum and an outdoor
stage named after folk singer Harry
Chapin, who made his home in
Huntington before his death in an auto
accident in 1981. Almost every night
throughout the summer, people come
with blankets and folding chairs to sit on
the grass in the park and hear professional musicians and singers, watch dance
companies and get wrapped up in yarns
spun by storytellers. The museum, founded in 1920 by the industrialist August
Heckscher, has an excellent permanent
collection of European and American
paintings and sculpture from the fifteenth
to the twentieth centuries, as well as
changing exhibits.
Heckscher lived in Huntington. His
mansion is gone, but just inside
Huntington Harbor is what used to be his
boathouse, now a family home we once
considered buying. The mansions of other
early twentieth century financiers and
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Offshore | October 2006
merchants, or their heirs, dot the waterfront around the bay. Marshall Field III,
whose father founded the successful
Field’s department store, built a mansion
and working farm, with prize Guernsey
cows, on 1,500 acres of Lloyd Neck. You
can see the mansion, now a New York
State environmental center and passive
park, to your west as you enter
Huntington Bay. It’s called Caumsett.
When we sit on our boat at its mooring,
it amuses me that we are in the view that
William K. Vanderbilt III saw from his
mansion, “Eagle’s Nest.” The tiled-roof
mansion sprawls across the hillside in
Centerport, on the west side of Northport
Harbor. When he wasn’t sailing across the
globe, bringing back marine specimens
and cultural artifacts, Vanderbilt raced his
boat in the bay against J. P. Morgan. The
mansion is now a museum where you can
see the collections Vanderbilt amassed on
his voyages. Also on the grounds is an
impressive planetarium,
Huntington Bay is also associated with
Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale. On
the Mill Dam road, at the dead end of
Huntington Harbor, a traffic triangle
holds a large rock with a plaque commemorating Hale. The neighborhood is even
known as Halesite. But the British didn’t
actually hang him in Huntington, as some
local residents believe. Hale sneaked
ashore in Huntington after coming across
the Sound from Connecticut, but, according to town historian Bob Hughes, he was
hanged as an American spy on the Upper
East Side of Manhattan.
O
ur sons, Eric and Chris, now in
their 20s, may not have had a
boat when they were as young as
TK, but when they were in junior high
school we gave them an unsinkable
Boston Whaler with a small motor. They,
too, often headed out to Sand City to play,
cook out and camp overnight. Now they
go there in a small speedboat they traded
years back for the Whaler.
Sand City is probably the most universally used and recognized spot within the
bay. Its history captures the constant
change to the bay brought about by natural causes and human enterprise.
Today, Sand City is a tiny island lying
just behind West Beach on Eaton’s Neck.
West Beach is so attenuated for part of its
length that boulders have been placed
along its spine to keep it from being
breached by storm-driven water. At its
southern end it widens out a bit into a
grassy sanctuary for terns and gulls. The
birds compete with anglers, who often
anchor in the channel that sweeps around
the tip of the beach, oblivious to the traffic
obstacles they become.
West Beach wasn’t always so narrow.
When mining began there in the 1880s—
exploiting the deep deposits of sand left
behind by the last glacier that bulldozed
this part of the world—there were several
more acres of beach than exist today. In
fact, in those days it took so long to get out
to what was then known as Port Eaton
that the workers could not commute; they
lived there in a company town. Sand City
was abandoned in the 1920s, and fire subsequently destroyed all the wooden buildings. But in the 1950s, Henry J. Steers
leased West Beach and continued dredging
sand. He stopped in 1964 when alarmed
local residents saw that West Beach would
be breached if the mining continued.
In the decades since, young people tied
ropes to the concrete structure that
remained, swinging out from it, amusement-park style, for a thrilling drop into
the water. (The structure was demolished
some years ago as a safety measure.)
Boaters of all ages discovered that the
deep crescent dug out by the sand mining
behind the beach made for a perfect
anchorage and swimming hole. Dozens of
boats anchor there on any good day in the
summer, getting away from it all only a
couple of miles from home. The tiny
island, with grass now taking over, is all
that remains of Sand City.
When I first started boating in
Huntington Bay, I didn’t know how unusual it was. But over the years, as I’ve cruised
to many of the most popular destinations
in the Northeast, been in the Chesapeake
and seen the coast of California, I’ve come
to appreciate its rarity. Mirror of the sky,
sanctuary in a storm, nautical playground
for boats of every size, fishing ground for
people and birds, passageway to the sea, it is
a world within itself, varied, ever-changing.
It is my home port.
Huntington Bay, Long Island, is home port for
Frances Cerra Whittelsey and her husband
Harry, shown here aboard Great White, the
46-foot sailing catamaran that takes them to
many of the locales she writes about.
Offshore | October 2006
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