Every October, the Long Island Maritime Museum picks a wooden boat whose sailing days are over, tows it onto the grounds, and burns it in front of a crowd. The 36th annual Halloween Boat Burning happens Friday, October 23, from 5 to 9:30 p.m. at the museum's waterfront campus at 88 West Avenue in West Sayville.

Admission is $5 per person, and children 5 and under get in free. The museum promises live music and a full food lineup: artisan soup, lobster rolls, burgers, ice cream, hot chocolate and coffee, all with the Great South Bay as the backdrop.

A send-off, not a stunt

The burning is the museum's version of a maritime funeral. Wooden boats that can no longer be saved get one last night as the center of attention, and the museum uses the occasion to tell the vessel's story before the fire takes it.

Last year's boat carried more history than most. Monitor II was the last of the wooden ferries that crossed the Great South Bay to Cherry Grove and the Fire Island Pines, a service with roots in Sayville going back to 1894. Built in the early 1960s with a plywood hull technique refined for World War II PT boats, she was commissioned by the Pokorny family as the first ferry in their fleet, setting off a two-family rivalry with the Steins that eventually had to be settled in court: the Steins got the Pines route, the Pokornys got Cherry Grove. By 1983 the Pokornys had sold the boat, the dock space and the rights to Stein's Sayville Ferry Service. The museum notes that the ferry's passenger list over the decades included Rock Hudson, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol and Barbra Streisand.

A village production

Setting a boat on fire safely takes more than a match. The museum credits the West Sayville Fire Department, the Suffolk County Parks Department, the county's Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services, and Community Ambulance Company for making the event possible each year, along with the volunteers who move and block the boat into position.

What to know before you go

The 2026 Halloween Boat Burning is Friday, October 23, 5 to 9:30 p.m., at the Long Island Maritime Museum, 88 West Avenue, West Sayville. Tickets are $5, free for children 5 and under, and are available through the museum's Eventbrite page. Dress for an October night on the bay.

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