Police: Boat found adrift in Huntington; suicide suspected

Police are searching for a missing boater whose sailboat was found adrift Thursday night in Lloyd Harbor. Suffolk police said they were investigating the incident as a suicide.

The boat's owner told a marina employee he was depressed before taking the sloop out earlier in the day, a source told Newsday on Friday.

Police received a call at 7:56 p.m. Thursday about an unmanned boat adrift off Caumsett State Historic Park in Lloyd Harbor, a spokeswoman said Friday.

According to a report on News 12 Long Island, traces of blood were found inside the vessel.

Coneys Marine co-owner Jim Coneys said the boat owner, a "loyal customer" whose name was not released, went out Thursday at 2 p.m. Coneys said the man went out two to three times a week and often took his family.

The missing man, a retiree from Long Beach, had kept his 27-foot Cape Dory named Caramar at the Halesite marina for the past five years, according to a source. He said when the owner was taken out to his sailboat on a smaller boat Thursday, the man, who was usually cheery, told the driver he was depressed. His wife had died last year.

A Coast Guard spokesman said that at the request of Suffolk police the agency began transmitting a radio alert at 8 p.m. Thursday for mariners to be on the lookout for a person in the water.

Coneys said Suffolk police came to the marina about 10:15 p.m. to inquire about the boater. "Hopefully, he is just on the beach somewhere, but with the little bit we do know, it doesn't look like that's the case," he said.

The police Marine Bureau towed the boat to a Huntington Town dock in Halesite.

A man and two women, one crying, stood by the sailor's car in the Coneys parking lot about 10 a.m. Friday, hugging each other. They said they knew the boater but declined to comment further.

With Tula Batanchiev and Mark Dwyer