Several drunken boating charges in Suffolk

The Suffolk County Police Department's first boating-while-intoxicated checkpoint yielded two arrests Saturday evening in Patchogue, and three other people were arrested on similar charges over the weekend in Babylon and Riverhead.

Police inspected 23 boats between 6:50 and 9 p.m. Saturday on the Patchogue River near the Sandspit Marina and charged a Patchogue man and a Holbrook woman with operating a vessel while intoxicated.

Ann Marie O'Toole, 55, of Holbrook, and Michael Bacher, 49, of Patchogue, were scheduled to be arraigned Sunday at First District Court in Central Islip.

Also arrested Saturday was Frank Vogt Jr., 56, of Lindenhurst. Police said they stopped Vogt and seized his 1973 Boston Whaler after he was seen boating after sunset without his lights on near Cedar Beach Marina in Babylon.

Vogt was charged with boating while intoxicated and operating a vessel after sunset without navigational lights displayed. Police said they impounded Vogt's vessel because of a previous driving while intoxicated conviction. Details on that case were not immediately available.

Vogt also was expected to be arraigned Sunday.

Two more arrests were made Sunday.

The first was at 1:09 p.m. in Bellport Bay, west of Smith Point Bridge. Suffolk police arrested Mark Mills, 49, of Pine Avenue in Ronkonkoma, and charged him with one count of boating while intoxicated. Mills also received a summons for failing to display a registration sticker on his 11 1/2-foot dinghy.

Later in the day, police in Riverhead arrested a Riverhead man on BWI charges after Coast Guard officers said they witnessed the man driving his boat erratically near Terry's Creek in Aquebogue.

The driver, Vytas Stackevicius, 35, of Goodale Court, also was cited with not having underage passengers -- ages 1 and 3 -- wear life preservers on his 19-foot pleasure boat, as well as not having enough life preservers, police said.

He was processed at police headquarters and was being held for arraignment Monday in Riverhead Town Justice Court, police said in a news release.

The arrests come on the heels of a string of BWI arrests this summer, including that of a Manhasset man accused of operating a boat while intoxicated with 16 children aboard near the Greenport breakwater earlier this month.

With Emily C. Dooley