Sag Harbor – What a Rip Off

Sag Harbor is not interested in your business, at least not if you’re under 100 feet. The moorings are on a first come, first served basis. They cannot be reserved. Well, that’s not too bad, we’ve seen that before in many places. However, we should have asked the mooring price in advance. We didn’t dream it was more than Shelter Island’s $60 but we were wrong. For the advantage of staying in Sag Harbor and enjoying the wakes, it’s $80/night! “Is there a dinghy dock? Sure, right over there by the long pier” What he failed to mention was the dinghy dockage fee of $5/day. This was for a dinghy dock barely big enough for three dinghies with the access ramp blocked by a fishing boat you had to push out of the way.

We did stroll downtown and I asked about dockage rates and found they averaged between $5.75 and $6.00/ft. Now, there were some very large yachts docked, all in a row as per the photo. I guess money doesn’t matter to them. They mostly were from foreign countries – probably our foreign aid coming home.

We went to the local fish market but they had no fish on display. You were to tell them what you wanted and they would go out in back (out of your sight) and “pick out” your order. We weren’t thrilled about that arrangement and walked out. As you can guess, we didn’t enjoy our stay. Nobody was friendly. There were lots of signs “No Dogs Allowed” on public parks, threats of towing and booting cars, no rollerblading, skateboards, etc. A lot of “NO” signs all over the place. We certainly didn’t feel welcomed and it’ll be a cold day you know where before we’ll ever come back.