Tags Posts tagged with "Port Jefferson Yacht Club"

Port Jefferson Yacht Club

By Heidi Sutton

The 14th annual Village Cup Regatta, a friendly competition between Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson, set sail on Sept. 9 on the Long Island Sound for two good causes.

The Regatta consists of Yacht Club-skippered sailboat where employees from the Hospital and Village help crew the boats, which race in one of three classes based on boat size.

Presented by the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, the Regatta raises funds for Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program and the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic cancer research. This year’s Regatta, which was won by the Mather team, raised $94,000 which was divided equally between the two groups. Mather Hospital’s Executive Director Kevin McGeachy accepted the Village Cup and the check for his team at a celebratory Skipper’s Reception at the Port Jefferson Village Center following the races. Mayor Lauren Sheprow represented the Port Jeff Village team.

Actor, director and local resident Ralph Macchio once again served as Village Cup Regatta Celebrity Ambassador for the event. Macchio has helped to publicize the important work of the two programs funded by the Regatta for the last ten years. His wife, Phyllis, is a nurse practitioner in Mather Hospital’s Palliative Medicine Program.

 

 

The Memorial Parade of Boats can be viewed from Harborfront Park in Port Jefferson. File photo by Bob Savage
View Memorial Parade of Boats at Harborfront Park prior to race

It’s time once again to sail for a cure as the 14th annual Village Cup Regatta, a friendly competition between Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson, returns on Saturday, Sept. 9. 

Presented by the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, the Regatta raises funds for Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program and the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic cancer research. Last year’s Regatta raised more than $109,000 — a record sum — which was divided between Mather Hospital and the Lustgarten Foundation. The event has raised almost $860,000 over the past 13 years.

The Regatta consists of Yacht Club-skippered sailboats divided into two teams representing Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson. Employees from the Hospital and Village help crew the boats, which race in one of three classes based on boat size. 

The festivities begin in Harborfront Park, 101 East Broadway in Port Jefferson Village, at 10 a.m, where you can purchase shirts, commemorative hats, nautical bags and mugs. The Memorial Parade of Boats begins at 11 a.m. at the Port Jefferson Village dock. All sailboats participating in the Regatta will pass by the park dressed in banners and nautical flags on their way out to the Long Island Sound for the race which begins at 1 p.m.

Actor, director and local resident Ralph Macchio will once again serve as Village Cup Regatta Celebrity Ambassador for the event. Macchio has helped to publicize the important work of the two programs funded by the Regatta for the last ten years. Macchio’s wife, Phyllis, is a nurse practitioner in Mather Hospital’s Palliative Medicine Program.

Following the Regatta, a celebratory Skipper’s Reception and presentation of the Village Cup will take place  at 3:30 p.m. in a restored 1917 shipyard building that today serves as the Port Jefferson Village Center, just steps away from the Harborfront Park.

To sign up as a crew member for the Mather Hospital team, contact Cindy Court at 631-476-2723 or [email protected]

To sign up as a crew member for the Port Jefferson Village team, contact Sylvia at 631-473-4724, ext. 219 or email [email protected].

For more information and to purchase tickets to the reception ($50 per person includes food, wine, beer and raffles), please visit www.portjeffersonyachtclub.com or www.facebook.com/villagecupregatta.

For further questions, please call 631-512-1068.

Boaters wave to the crowd at Harborfront Park during last year's Memorial Parade of Boats. Photo by Julianne Mosher/TBR News Media

It’s time once again to sail for a cure as the 13th annual Village Cup Regatta, a friendly competition between Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson, returns on Saturday, Sept. 10. 

Mayor Margot Garant, pictured with Regatta Ambassador Ralph Macchio, Mather Hospital Executive Director Kevin McGeachy and Stephanie McGeachy, accepted last year’s Village Cup on behalf of the Village of Port Jefferson.

Presented by the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, the Regatta raises funds for Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program and the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic cancer research. Last year’s Regatta raised more than $104,000 — a record sum — which was divided between Mather Hospital and the Lustgarten Foundation. The event has raised more than $750,000 over the past 12 years.

The Regatta consists of Yacht Club-skippered sailboats divided into two teams representing Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson. Employees from the Hospital and Village help crew the boats, which race in one of three classes based on boat size.

The festivities begin in Harborfront Park, 101 East Broadway in Port Jefferson Village, at 10 a.m, where you can purchase shirts, commemorative hats, nautical bags and mugs. The Memorial Parade of Boats begins at 11 a.m. at the Port Jefferson Village dock. All sailboats participating in the Regatta will pass by the park dressed in banners and nautical flags on their way out to the Long Island Sound for the race which begins at 1 p.m.

Actor, director and local resident Ralph Macchio will once again serve as Village Cup Regatta Celebrity Ambassador for the event. Macchio has helped to publicize the important work of the two programs funded by the Regatta for the last ten years. Macchio’s wife, Phyllis, is a nurse practitioner in Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program.

Following the Regatta, a celebratory Skipper’s Reception and presentation of the Village Cup will take place  at 3:30 p.m. in a restored 1917 shipyard building that today serves as the Port Jefferson Village Center.

For more information and to purchase tickets to the reception ($50 per person includes food, wine, beer and raffles), please visit www.portjeffersonyachtclub.com or www.facebook.com/villagecupregatta. For further questions, call 631-512-1068.

 

Photo by Julianne Mosher

The 12th annual Village Cup Regatta, a friendly competition between Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson, set sail Saturday on the Long Island Sound all for a good cause.

Presented by the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, the Regatta raised funds for Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program and the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic cancer research. 

During the event, held on Sept. 11, the Regatta honored all those who perished in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the first responders who answered the call, while members of the hospital and village helped crew boats. The race had three classes based on boat size, and this year, the village won. $104,000 was raised and divided between both the Palliative Medicine Program and the Lustgarten Foundation.

Actor, director and local resident Ralph Macchio was again community ambassador for the event. 

Macchio has helped to publicize the important work of the two programs funded by the Regatta for the last nine years. Macchio’s wife, Phyllis, is a nurse practitioner in Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program.

View the Memorial Parade of Boats before race. Photo by Bob Savage

The 12th annual Village Cup Regatta, a friendly competition between Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson, will sail with full crews this Saturday, September 11. 

Join Ralph Macchio in supporting a most worthy cause. File photo by Bob Savage

Presented by the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, the Regatta raises funds for Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program and the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic cancer research. The event has raised almost $640,500 for the two organizations. Last year’s event was held without crew members due to the pandemic. The event raised $40,000, which was divided between Mather and Lustgarten.

Actor/director and local resident Ralph Macchio will again act as community ambassador for the event. This is the ninth year Macchio has helped to publicize the important work of the two programs funded by the Regatta. Macchio’s wife, Phyllis, is a nurse practitioner in Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program.

The Regatta consists of Yacht Club-skippered sailboats divided into two teams representing Mather Hospital and the Village of Port Jefferson. Employees from the Hospital and Village help crew the boats, which race in one of three classes based on boat size. 

The festivities will begin at Harborfront Park in Port Jefferson Village at 10 a.m., where you can purchase t-shirts signed by Ralph Macchio, along with the event’s commemorative hats, nautical bags and mugs. The Memorial Parade of Boats begins at 11 a.m. at the Port Jefferson Village dock. All sailboats participating in the Regatta will pass by the park dressed in banners and nautical flags on their way out to the racecourse on Long Island Sound.

Following the race, a celebratory Skipper’s Reception and presentation of the Village Cup will take place in a restored 1917 shipyard building that now serves as the Port Jefferson Village Center.

Businesses, organizations and individuals can support the Regatta and the programs it funds by making a donation or purchasing tickets to attend the Skipper’s Reception or view the event on a spectator boat.. Sponsorships also are available. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit http://portjeffersonyachtclub.com/community/village-cup/ or www.facebook.com/villagecupregatta

The vessels’ pennants and flags quivered in the mid-morning wind. Those who knew their way around a boat could tell Sept. 7 was going to be complicated day for sailing, as a storm that blew over the day previous left lingering swathes of somewhat choppy seas and miniature gales. The 10th annual Village Cup Regatta was going to be interesting one way or the other.

And it was, even before the race started, with the annual regatta raising $91,000 for cancer research, the most it has ever raised since the event started with help from the Port Jefferson Yacht Club 10 years ago. The amount is being split evenly by the national nonprofit Lustgarten Foundation’s pancreatic cancer research program and John T. Mather Memorial Hospital’s Palliative Medicine Program. The event has raised well over $600,000 in the 10 years since it was created.

After hours of tense racing through Port Jefferson Harbor, Port Jeff village regained the cup from Mather, who held it after winning it in 2017. The 2018 event was canceled due to weather, and the winner of the cup went to Mother Nature instead.

At a party after the race at the Port Jefferson Village Center, Mather Hospital gifted the yacht club a plaque commemorating its efforts to help put on the event. 

Joan Fortgang, a Port Jeff resident who has raced for the village the past nine years along with her husband Mort, said she has loved the event since the beginning. As part of the yacht club since 1973, she said their group has lost several good people to cancer, which originally helped prompt the idea for the event.

“This is great fun,” she said.

 

Nearly 250 Port Jeff residents support a pool somewhere in the village. Stock photo

By Alex Petroski

A group of nearly 250 Port Jefferson residents have a dream, but it is unlikely they will have any help from the village in trying to make it come to fruition.

Todd Pittinsky, a four-year village resident and Stony Brook University professor, has spearheaded and galvanized a movement that has nearly doubled in size since the beginning of 2017. The professor created a Facebook group more than a year ago to gauge community interest in constructing a pool for village residents.

In meetings that have taken place both online and in person, Pittinsky has organized a group that now has 243 supporters behind the idea of building a pool somewhere in the village and has even gotten one modest bite from a potential partner who might be able to supply a location: the Port Jefferson Yacht Club. Pittinsky formally presented some of the findings and brainstorming that have emerged from the meetings to the Port Jeff village board during a public meeting Nov. 6 in the hopes of gaining its support.

“We just realized we’ve been meeting and talking but at some point there’s only so far we can go as an outside group,” he said. “One of the issues that we talked about is this looming specter of the power plant closing and what that might mean for the tax base. One of the things that emerged from our group is we would just encourage the board and the mayor, as you think about that prospect and you think about that scenario, we can be pretty much guaranteed that property values will go down if there’s nothing to replace it. So you could imagine a race to the bottom where the village stops investing in education, stops investing in recreation and then the question becomes ‘Why should I move to Port Jefferson?’ Unfortunately being on the water is just not enough.”

Pittinsky’s pitch concluded with a request to the village to commission a study to determine the feasibility of a village pool and to examine the landscape of state grants available to municipalities constructing new recreational facilities.

“The village has no plans to actively pursue a pool at this time,” Mayor Margot Garant said in a statement since the meeting. “However, we are agreeable to working with the committee to assess the need and community support. We agree the country club would be the most suitable location, but under the current circumstances cannot foresee this as a village priority.”

Joe Yorizzo, commodore of the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, confirmed in a phone interview Pittinsky’s group has approached the club and although the conversations thus far have been preliminary, he said the club is interested in further discussing the possibility of building a pool. The group has also floated Danfords Hotel & Marina and the Port Jefferson Country Club as possible locations.

During the presentation, Pittinsky cited the health benefits of swimming, the safe and supervised environment for recreational activity that a public pool would create, revenue generated through memberships, a boost to property value and community cohesion across a wide array of age groups as some of the possible benefits. He said the cost of construction and finding a suitable location are the obvious hurdles that will need to be cleared in order for the proposal to truly get off the ground.

“At the end of the day, we ran a bunch of revenue models and the memberships do have to be expensive for at least the first 10 years to cover the construction, but we think that even if it is expensive we could balance it with access through something like once-a-week open community days where someone could buy one-day passes,” he said. “Then you’re kind of achieving the best of both worlds, where the people are particularly passionate about it and are willing and have the resources to contribute, but you also allow others to have access.”

In February Pittinsky said a place for his 3-year-old son to learn to swim was one of the few elements the village is currently lacking, though creating a place where the community can gather and enjoy together has also long been one of his goals. Part of the group’s work has included an informal study to try to determine how many people in the village have their own private pools. Using Google Maps, they concluded only about one in 17 homes currently have pools in Port Jeff. Pittinsky also stressed during the presentation that a wide range of demographics are represented in the group, and even those with their own pools see the value in a public pool.

He concluded his pitch with what he called the group’s tagline: “Let’s make a splash together.”

For more information about the group visit www.facebook.com/portpluspool/.

Port Jefferson Village and John T. Mather Memorial Hospital squared off on the open seas for the eighth time Sept. 9 for the Village Cup Regatta, an annual event that features a parade, sailboat race, a reception and even remarks from actor Ralph Macchio. Representatives from both groups man vessels and race in the Long Island Sound near Port Jefferson Harbor for bragging rights and, more importantly, to raise money for cancer research. The Mather team won the 2017 incarnation of the race and proudly took the trophy back from Village Mayor Margot Garant, who had the cup since the village’s 2016 victory. In total, about $65,000 was raised for Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program and for the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic cancer research. The event is hosted by the Port Jefferson Yacht Club.

Brilliant, an 85-year-old schooner ship visits Port Jefferson Harbor May 22. Photo by Alex Petroski
Brilliant, an 85-year-old schooner ship visits Port Jefferson Harbor May 22. Photo by Alex Petroski

By Alex Petroski

Boating enthusiasts in Port Jefferson were treated to a piece of history May 22.

Brilliant, an 85-year-old, 61-foot schooner docked in Port Jefferson Harbor Monday afternoon, just weeks after the anniversary of its launch in 1932.

“It is known as one of the finest and best-maintained wooden vessels in America,” John Lane, former commodore of the Port Jefferson Yacht Club and a 47-year resident of Poquott said in a phone interview. He added that the vessel is “spotless,” and lauded its ahead-of-its time design.

For 65 years, the ship has sailed under the flag of the Mystic Seaport, a Connecticut-based boating museum, and has been used as a training vessel for children and adults interested in honing sailing skills and experiencing full immersion into ship board life.

“After a busy spring and a lot of work by a vast army of crew, volunteers, painters, yard workers, specialists and vendors Brilliant is in top shape,” Brilliant’s Captain Nicholas Alley said in a message posted on the museum’s website ahead of the 2017 boating season. He has been at the helm of the ship for six years. “Now we get to enjoy that labor and take this floating jewelry box out sailing.”

Brilliant was initially built for businessman Walter Barnum, who used it as a racing boat in the 1930s. During World War II, it was used as a patrol vessel for the United States Coast Guard. In 1953 it was donated to the Mystic Seaport. The ship sailed to Oyster Bay last week for three weekends of racing against other classic yachts, and it made a stop in Port Jefferson along the way.

The ship is considered one of the 100 most beautiful classic boats in America by WoodenBoat Magazine. It is estimated to have transported more than 10,000 people in its history.

Port Jefferson Village snatched ownership of the Village Cup back from John T. Mather Memorial Hospital at the 7th annual Village Cup Regatta boat race on Sept. 10 in Port Jefferson Harbor.

The race, which is presented by the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, features about a dozen competing boats representing either the village or Mather Hospital, and is held for a good cause.

The event has raised more than $300,000 since its inception for Mather’s Palliative Medicine Program and the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic cancer research.

The hospital held the cup entering the 2016 race, though the village has now won four of the last six years.