Boat transport from Long Island to Florida

Twelve hundred miles to Florida, and the first forty are the ones that decide the job. Getting a wide load off this island is a genuinely different problem from getting one out of Connecticut or Rhode Island, and it is worth understanding before you take a quote.

Long Island holds one of the densest concentrations of boats anywhere on the East Coast, from Port Washington and Oyster Bay round to Huntington and Northport on the north shore, down the south shore through Freeport, Babylon and Patchogue, and out east to Sag Harbor, Greenport and Montauk. Every autumn a large number of them go south, and every spring they come back.

What makes the Island particular is not the distance. It is that a boat wide enough to need an oversize permit cannot simply drive off it. The routes available to a permitted load are few, they run through some of the busiest road in the country, and which one your driver uses is decided by the permit rather than by the map.

Why the parkways are out

Anybody who has driven here knows the parkways are the quick way across the Island. For this job they do not exist. Commercial vehicles are barred from the parkway system, and the parkway bridges are famously low, low enough that trucks which ignore the signs get peeled open on them several times a year. A truck towing a boat is a commercial vehicle carrying a tall load, which puts it comprehensively in the wrong place.

So the practical network for a boat on a trailer is the Long Island Expressway and the commercial roads that feed it, plus Sunrise Highway on the south shore. That is a much smaller network than the one in your head, it is busy, and on an oversize permit the departure time is constrained too, because a permitted load generally travels between sunrise and sunset and often not during rush hours.

Three ways off, and what each costs you

Every boat leaving the Island by road takes one of these. Which one is right depends on where she starts, how wide she is, and what the permit says.

The ferry option is the one owners on the East End forget, and it is sometimes the sensible answer: from Greenport or Sag Harbor, crossing to Connecticut can be shorter and calmer than driving the length of the Island to fight the bridges. It is not always cheaper once the ferry fare for a large rig is counted, and a wide load is not guaranteed a place, so it is a question for the driver rather than an assumption.

The Island premium, and where it comes from

Expect a Long Island departure to price a little above the same boat leaving from coastal Connecticut, and the gap is not the mileage. It is three things: the tolls at oversize rates on a crossing you cannot avoid, the time a permitted load loses crossing the metro area, and the fact that the first leg often eats a chunk of a travel day before the run south has properly started.

Everything after that is the ordinary arithmetic of a Northeast to Florida move: the driver’s days, the flight home, fuel at towing mileage, permits in every state she crosses, escorts where the beam requires them, and a lift at each end. The New York cost guide works the whole list through, and the cost planner lets you put a real quote against it.

One saving is particular to here. Because so many boats leave the same harbours in the same fortnight, a driver already making the run that week may take yours on the same trip rather than making a journey specially. On an island with this many boats and this few ways off it, that is worth asking about every time.

Four things to settle early

• The yard slot at both ends. Long Island yards haul out in the same few weeks as everyone else, and the good slots in October go early. The move cannot happen without a lift here and a lift in Florida, so book those before you book the driver, not after.
• Your beam, honestly measured. Widest point, including rub rails and anything bolted on. Beam decides whether she needs a permit at all, what the escorts cost, and in some cases whether the road is the right answer. Guessing it low does not save money, it just moves the surprise to the yard. What the permits actually govern.
• Whether you are hiring a driver or a carrier. If you have your own truck and a trailer that fits her, hiring somebody for the one way trip is usually cheaper and you keep your own equipment under her. If you have neither, a carrier with their own rig and their own authority is the answer. The difference is set out here.
• The insurance question, in August. If somebody else is driving your truck with your boat behind it, ring your agent before you agree dates. It is the question that strands the most moves, and only because people ask it last. The questions to ask.

Or send her down on her own bottom

Long Island is one of the places where this genuinely competes, because the boat is already in the water, already at the western end of the Sound, and the trip south is a passage she can make herself. No permit, no escort, no bridge, and none of the metro crossing that makes the road leg awkward.

The trade is time and sea miles: one to two weeks depending on whether she goes offshore or down the Intracoastal, against about three days on a trailer, plus fuel, dockage and a captain’s days. For a wide hull, where the road move pulls heavy permits and escorts through several states, the comparison often lands in the captain’s favour. What a delivery captain costs lays out every line, and the decision guide works through which suits which boat.