Home Community Community News Sailing into Christmas: Bedazzling boat lights up New Suffolk waterfront

Sailing into Christmas: Bedazzling boat lights up New Suffolk waterfront

Lighting the sailboat at the New Suffolk waterfront. Photo: Katharine Schroeder

If you like to attend Christmas tree lightings, you’ve had many choices over the past weeks on the North Fork. But have you ever seen a sailboat lighting?

The New Suffolk Waterfront Fund held its unconventional ceremony Saturday evening, lighting up a Dink sailboat at the waterfront near Case’s Place.

Lauren Grant, New Suffolk Waterfront Fund board member, took on the task of decorating the boat.

“Last year we used tin cans for decorations, but they rusted and were sharp, so they broke some of the lights. This year I tried something different. I had used a few bottles last year and decided that this year I’d use all vitamin bottles so I started saving them for this purpose,” she said.

Some of the colored bottles decorating the sailboat. Photo: Katharine Schroeder

“All the vitamins come in these colored bottles, so it’s recycling and that’s a cool thing. In the daylight they sparkle in the sun, so they’re like suncatchers.”

The boat, a Dink sailboat that can also be used as a rowboat, is on loan from Paul Maffei of New Suffolk. “I rarely use it, so I loan it to them for the Christmas season. It was Lauren’s idea to use a sailboat for Christmas.”

And where did all those bottles come from?

“Those are all my bottles. I took a lot of CoQ10 and B12 this year,” she says with a laugh.

Photo: Katharine Schroeder
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Katharine is a writer and photographer who has lived on the North Fork for nearly 40 years, except for three-plus years in Hong Kong a decade ago, working for the actor Jackie Chan. She lives in Cutchogue. Email Katharine