Against the backdrop of bustling ferries and commercial traffic on New York Harbor and saluted with spraying water from a New York City fireboat, some 70 sailboats will gather by the Statue of Liberty early on July 25 for the start of the 47th Around Long Island Regatta—a 207-mile event that challenges sailors with everything from calms to strong sea breezes, complex currents, and often the unexpected.
“It’s a test of mettle,” says Harvey Bass, who’s competed about 15 times. “It’s a test of your ability, your boat’s ability. Some years the race is a walk; other years, it can be frightful.”
Last year, 71 boats competed in nine divisions. Principal race officer Doug Wefer of the sponsoring Sea Cliff Yacht Club says that in response to feedback from participants, a significant change this year will making doublehanded boats eligible for the overall winner trophy for the first time. Usually about 15% of boats are doublehanded, and race organizers decided that their advantage of lighter crew weight (the club’s reasoning for excluding them from the overall winner designation) is offset by the challenges inherent in fewer people sailing the boat.
“We’ll have a mix of people,” Wefer predicts. “Some will have sailed in the race before. Some are brand new to racing and excited to try the adventure of sailing around Long Island.”
The course is deceptively straightforward: under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to a buoy off the harbor entrance where boats turn east for the long, straight shot paralleling Long Island’s South Shore to Montauk Point. Then it’s up around Orient Point at the end of the North Fork and down Long Island Sound to the finish in Hempstead Harbor off the Sea Cliff Yacht Club.
The usually strong southern sea breezes propel the boats in the Atlantic Ocean along the South Shore. But typically, the wind drops or disappears entirely once around Montauk Point to cross Gardiners Bay and enter Long Island Sound. In addition to different winds, currents here can be extremely strong and complex—and making a poor decision regarding current can set a boat back miles. While some boats finish late on the starting day, some straggle across the finish line almost three days later.
John Stephenson of New Paltz, who holds the distinction of sailing in the most consecutive ALIRs, plans to compete for the 19th time this year. His first three times, in 2006, ’07, and ’08, he crewed on the boat of another member of his yacht club. The support engineer for IBM then began racing at the helm of his Laser 28, A Boy’s Dream, one of the smallest boats in the regatta.
“We actually made the trip around the island when they canceled the race in 2020 during Covid just because we didn’t want to break our streak,” Stephenson says. He enjoys the race because his sailing is primarily on the river, and this is an opportunity to get some saltwater sailing. “I also think that it’s a mental and physical and equipment challenge because it’s a nonstop race. So the crew is active for anywhere from 36 to 60 hours with the mental challenges of driving through storms, sailing at night, being overtired, hallucinating, trying to make good decisions. We’ve had all kinds of weather, everything from storms to fog, not enough wind, too much wind, too much heat, not enough heat.”
The ALIR’s story begins with the Operation Sail parade of tall ships in New York Harbor for the Bicentennial in 1976. Sea Cliff maritime historian and artist Frank Braynard—who later became an honorary member of Sea Cliff Yacht Club—helped organize that popular July 4 event and decided to build upon it by creating a sailing race around Long Island the following year with the help of club members Wes Bailey and Pete Bethge. The trio arranged for Newsday to sponsor the first Around Long Island Regatta that attracted 88 competitors.
In the early years, the ALIR started in Sheepshead Bay on the southern shore of Brooklyn with the finish by the yacht club. In the mid-1980s, when the race grew to more than 200 boats, the regatta began off the southern shore of Staten Island. Then it moved back to Sheepshead Bay in 1996. It remained there until 2017 when the course was lengthened to 207 miles to have the boats start by the Statue of Liberty so more people could see it.
“It was wildly successful,” Wefer says. “Now, it’s quite a spectacle.”
For more on the regatta, visit seacliffyc.org/Sailing/Regattas
June/July 2024
