Sag Harbor Freezes Number of Moorings in Outer Field

The Sag Harbor Village Board, at a special meeting on Monday, voted to limit the number of moorings in the outer mooring field to 67, the same number a recent inventory taken by the harbormaster’s office showed were in place last year.

The board acted over the objections of Jim Scheel of the Sag Harbor Yacht Yard, who said the village’s numbers were off and that the yacht yard actually had contracts for 22 moorings, not the five that were listed in the harbormaster’s inventory.

Scheel, who is in his first season as manager of the yacht yard, said he was concerned that the village had relied on inaccurate figures.

He told the board that he was asked how many moorings the yacht yard had in the outer mooring area. At the time, he said there were only five left in for the winter, and he gave that number. In fact, he said he had records of 22 moorings that were managed by the yacht yard last year.

He told the board that he had customers for those moorings, and that the yacht yard had invested $240,000 to replace the boat it uses to set moorings after the old boat sank in Montauk last winter. He said he had also invested $70,000 in more environmentally friendly mooring anchors that hold their position on the bottom better than conventional mushroom anchors.

Board members assured Scheel that once he provided proof that the yacht yard had that many moorings in place, it would amend the restriction it had imposed to recognize that he should be given credit for 17 more moorings.

The board was in a rush to act after learning it had never put a limit on the number of moorings that could be placed in the outer field after it was allowed by the state to extend its jurisdiction beyond the 1,500-foot mark. Under a waterways act that it adopted in 2021, the board was given the right to oversee moorings, but it never assumed that responsibility, leaving management of the mooring field with the harbormaster’s office.

This year, in an effort to better regulate the placement of moorings in a way that would be fair to all boaters and mitigate environmental impacts, the Village Board organized a workshop before its March monthly meeting to discuss a proposal that would require mooring applicants to register the boats they were going to moor, provide proof of insurance, place their mooring at a GPS coordinate provided by the harbormaster, and pay a $350 administrative fee.

Trustee Jeanne Kane, who oversees the docks and harbor for the board, said besides limiting the number of moorings and encouraging users to use eco-friendly mooring anchors that minimize disturbance to the bottomland, the board would introduce a pilot program requiring boaters to use orange ties to lock the valves of their sanitary systems.

The requirement would make it next to impossible for a boater to violate no-discharge regulations, which extend across all of Peconic Bay.

Besides distributing the ties, the harbormaster will give boaters a card reminding them of the rules and providing them information about the free pump-out service offered in the harbor.