Coney Island attraction: Sailing Enterprise

A brief rain and persistent, blustery wind had driven many people off the Coney Island boardwalk by late Sunday afternoon.

Those who stayed, however, were treated to a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle: Enterprise, the nation's first space shuttle orbiter, gliding through the harbor just off shore.

"Maybe down in Florida, this is an everyday thing," said Dale McReynolds, 61, of Sheepshead Bay, just before the Enterprise passed by on a Weeks Marine barge, on its way to becoming a Manhattan museum piece. "But here, this is historic."

As the 122-foot-long, 150,000-pound spacecraft slowly rounded Brooklyn's southwestern tip, toward the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, it briefly distracted from garish boardwalk attractions.

The Astroland rocket ship? This was the real thing.

"It was awesome. Met all my expectations," said Reggie Pryor, 46, a supervisor at Deno's amusement park on the boardwalk. "Nice they brought it along the beach so everybody could see it."

It was the second day of a four-day effort to move the Enterprise from Kennedy Airport, where the shuttle arrived on the back of a jumbo jet in late April, to its permanent home at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum at Manhattan's Pier 86, West 46th Street at 12th Avenue.

Monday, the Enterprise will rest at the Weeks Marine facility in Greenville Yard, Jersey City, while NASA engineers retract its landing gear and move it onto a larger barge.

At almost every step of its path, curious onlookers have crowded the shoreline and bridges to see the retired shuttle. But Sunday may not have been the most optimal viewing day. The rain subsided by the time the shuttle passed the beach, but skies were overcast and the wind sometimes stiff.

"A so-so crowd," assessed Pryor, who narrowly missed seeing the spacecraft's arrival via jet in late April, and made sure he got outside in time Sunday. "There are probably kids here who don't even know what they're looking at."

The Enterprise never went into space, but in 1977, it served as the prototype for the country's celebrated shuttle program. Since the early 1990s, it had been on display at the National Air and Space Museum annex near Washington.

The shuttle will continue on its way around the tip of Manhattan Tuesday morning. It is scheduled to pass the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center site, travel up the Hudson River and arrive at the Intrepid just before noon.

As the museum prepares permanent exhibit space for the historic spacecraft, it will open for public display July 19 inside a temporary, climate-controlled pavilion.

The Coney Island crowd on Sunday mostly seemed to encounter the Enterpise by accident. But Orlando McReynolds, Dale's husband, said he came out knowing it would pass through.

The couple was inconvenienced by the shuttle's late arrival, but not surprised.

"Traffic," Orlando McReynolds quipped. "This is New York."