Cruising home after a wonderful dinner at Riverview Restaurant, watching the stars come out, and feeling the calm waters of Bay lap against the boat. It was the last night of boating, well into an extended, and mild late fall on Long Island. As the boat slowly swept by Patchogue River my friend on the boat with me pointed to me a couple of boats, with lights on them. We cruised closer, and found a beautiful flotilla of boats coming out of Patchogue River. They were all decked in lights for the holiday season and had music playing. It was a joyous sight, and of course my Minolta's battery died that exact minute. Fortunately, the Apple QuickTake was ready for the situation, and here are some of the sights we enjoyed. As a matter of fact the banner image above is of that day, and you can see one or two boats that we saw in the distance, before we moved closer. I hope next year, at the end of the season, you will be out on your boat, and enjoy being a part of this floating friendly fleet from Patchogue.

After more than 24 hours of boating and watching 4th of July fireworks the previous night, I went out to Patchogue River to watch the 1999 Fireworks at 9:30 pm July 5th, 1999. These were also arranged by Grucci, and ran for only about 15 minutes but there were about 100 boats there to watch the show. The fireworks barge was located close to the Patchogue River on the Great South Bay. The linked pages on the left have some of the pictures that I took on my Apple QuickTake camera and uploaded to the PowerBook as the show took place. I then uploaded them to the web site about 10 minutes after I got home. Enjoy - and make sure you are a safe boater. See you there in 2000, God Willing.

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