WaterFront Center

Coordinates: 40°52′32.81″N 73°32′23.07″W / 40.8757806°N 73.5397417°W / 40.8757806; -73.5397417 The WaterFront Center (WFC) is a non-profit community marine education and sailing center located in Oyster Bay, New York with the mission of connecting people to the water through education and recreation. Each year WFC provides programs, activities, school field trips and group events for over 20,000 youth and adult participants. Participants engage in activities that include: seining, sniggling, paddleboarding, kayaking, learn to sail for adults and juniors, sailboat racing, and STEAM education are a small sample of the programs offered.

Christeen

Photo of Christeen, 2008

The Christeen is the oldest oyster sloop in the United States and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1992. She was built in 1883 in Glenwood Landing, New York as a gaff-rigged sloop. She had several homes including Essex, Connecticut, but in 1992 she arrived back in the hamlet of Oyster Bay, New York at The WaterFront Center. Funds were raised and over the next seven years, she was restored and relaunched. She currently serves as a working museum ship, offering educational tours of Oyster Bay and Cold Spring Harbor.[1]

History

The Center for Marine Education and Recreation at Oyster Bay, dba the WaterFront Center (WFC), was incorporated in 2000 under the leadership of local philanthropists. In the beginning, the WFC was primarily an education organization that developed shore programs for local schools and groups to learn about the habitat of the estuary. Then in 2001, the WFC was able to raise private funds to purchase the Oyster Bay Sailing School and a fleet of dinghies and support boats. Community sailing was seen as an environmentally friendly way to increase the public’s access to the bay and to compliment education programs. Over the next few years, improvements were made to the sailing school by adding more Sonars and dinghies, improving instruction and becoming certified by US Sailing.

Oyster Bay is said to have some of the healthiest waters in the Long Island Sound; they are classified SA - signifying the highest and best water quality. Home of the famous “Pine Island” oysters, farmed since 1887 by Frank M. Flower and Sons, our waters produce up to 90 percent of the oysters and up to 40 percent of the hard clams harvested in all of New York State.

This area of the waterfront used to be the site of Jakobson’s Shipyard, which during World War II employed over 600 workers, building minesweepers, tugboats and mini-submarines for the U.S. Navy. At its height of production, Jakobson’s Shipyard was the largest builder of tugboats east of the Mississippi.


See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Waterfront Center 2008 Program Guide", pg. 4.
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