High fuel prices keep some boats docked

Although the name painted on Larry Weiss' 33-foot cabin cruiser is Ever After, he's started calling it The Dock Porch.

With fuel prices soaring, Weiss expects to spend a lot of his boating time this summer tied to the dock in Oyster Bay.

And when he does take out his Carver with twin 350-cubic-inch engines that consume 25 gallons of gasoline per hour, he plans to stay close to home.

He's not alone. As they did during past spikes, fuel prices are challenging the summer plans of many Long Island boaters, especially those with larger craft.

"We used to do a tremendous amount of cruising, three or four times a summer, at least to Northport or Connecticut and even to Canada and Martha's Vineyard," Weiss said. "Now it's exceedingly expensive. You're talking about $125 an hour."

So, the Plainview resident said, "when we do take it out, we'll stay within the harbor and anchor. We might go on a trip once or twice this summer but I don't think we'll be cruising very far."

Frank Messina of Huntington also plans to limit long voyages this summer.

"We'll stay local a lot more," said the owner of a 33-foot Egg Harbor cabin cruiser that burns 37 gallons of fuel per hour.

He usually goes out a lot to fish and takes one or two longer trips to Connecticut or Block Island. But this year, he said, "those longer trips would not be within my price range anymore."

Some of Weiss' friends have taken even more drastic action in the face of rising fuel prices -- they're selling their boats, he said.

Mattituck Inlet Marina and Shipyard last week offered 93-octane gasoline for $5.32 per gallon, up from $4.12 last May.

"We've had customers say, 'I don't think I'm going to put my boat in the water this year because the price of fuel is going to be crazy,' " said Jody Blumenauer, the marina office manager. "Then you have people who say it doesn't matter because it's their hobby."

But high fuel prices do matter to some new buyers, further hampering boat sales already crippled by several years of a struggling economy and burdened by the cold, rainy early spring weather, boating industry executives said.

"We have seen problems in the past year to two years from the economy," said Chris Squeri, executive director of the New York Marine Trades Association, a Long Island industry group. "But we're starting to see business get better."

The biggest problem this spring, he said, "is that the weather hasn't been as nice as it usually is and the weather has had more of an impact than the fuel prices so far."

Walter Koch of Dickerson Marine in Mattituck, past president of the Association of Marine Industries, an East End trade group, cited tight financing as the most crippling factor affecting boat sales.Sailboat owners and some other boaters are shrugging off the sticker shock at the fuel dock.

Jon Ten Haagen of Centerport, cruising captain at Northport Yacht Club, where he keeps a 34-foot sailboat that sips 20 gallons of diesel all season, is planning a club cruise to Cape Cod.

He said more than a dozen boats have signed up to go already -- half of them powerboats.Still, it could be worse for boaters. At Woodcleft Fishing Station in Freeport, where 89-octane gas is selling for $4.79 a gallon -- up from $3.49 a year ago -- it's still far lower than the peak in 2008, when it cost $5.49.