HDC is co-sponsoring two lighthouse boat tours with our Six to Celebrate partner, the National Lighthouse Museum. We have a limited number of tickets available for each tour. Free admission to the museum is included with your purchase of a tour ticket.
Lighthouse Boat Tours commence rain or shine.
All Tours are scheduled for 3 hours, however, tides and currents may increase the time needed to return to dock!
The boat leaves from the National Lighthouse Museum Site/Pier 1
Lighthouse Weekend Signature Tour to Sandy Hook & Twin Lights
August 3, 2025
11:00 am – 2:00 pm
Popularly regarded as NLM’s “Signature Tour” this exciting boat tour, familiarizes passengers with key lighthouses that facilitate safe passage from the Atlantic Ocean into Lower New York Harbor. The series will be narrated by Wade R. Goria. Wade is a National Lighthouse Museum historian, author, and former New York University professor.
We explore a total of nine lighthouses: Battery Weed Light located atop Fort Wadsworth, the Coney Island Lighthouse, West Bank and Romer Shoals Lighthouses, the Sandy Hook Light, The Twin Lighthouses of Navesink at Atlantic Highlands, the Staten Island Rear Range at Richmond Hill, the New Dorp Light, and the Elm Tree Beacon at Miller Field, also located in New Dorp.
After sailing past historic Forts Wadsworth and Hamilton at the Narrows, we head under the Verrazano Bridge passing the former Quarantine stations of Hoffman and Swineburn Islands.
Enroute to the Sandy Hook Light, situated near the tip of an eight mile spit at Fort Hancock, a coastal defense base that once guarded the approach of NY Harbor, we learn about the role that this proud and historic beacon has played on behalf of NYC’s maritime trade and its commerce over the centuries.
Cruising on the Ambrose Channel, Sandy Hook Bay and the Shrewsberry River we journey along the Atlantic Highlands past the towns of Keyport and Leonardo, home to Naval Weapons Station Earle and the world’s longest pier as well as Mount Mitchill, the highest point on the Atlantic coast from Maine to the Yucatan in Mexico. The Atlantic Highlands is home to one of the most spectaular lighthouses in America: the Navesink Twin Light Station, the very first structure in America witnessed by immigrants following an Atlantic crossing.
Upon our return along the Ambrose Channel into Lower New York Bay, we head near to the Coney Island Lighthouse at Norton’s Point in Seagate, Coney Island, where famed Keeper Frank Schubert, NYC’s last Light Keeper, resided for 40 years.
$60
Past
The East River and Long Island Sound
July 13, 2025
11:00 am – 2:00 pm
Many of NYC’s most fascinating and noteworthy historical sights are highlighted on this unforgettable journey up the East River and Long Island Sound. The series will be narrated by Wade R. Goria. Wade is a National Lighthouse Museum historian, author, and former New York University professor.
As we pass Robbins Reef Lighthouse, aka “Kate’s Light” we recount the compelling story of the legendary Keeper, Kate Walker.
Across the harbor on the Brooklyn side we see the docks of Red Hook, subject of the famous movie about racketeering and corruption that afflicted the lives of Red Hook’s Long Shoremen: “On the Waterfront”, the Atlantic Basin, Governor’s Island, notable vessels at the South Street Seaport such as the Ambrose Lightship and the Waverley, the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, DUMBO, the Williamsburg Bridge, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Corlears Hook, once a dangerous and sordid hotbed of criminal East River Maritime life.
Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City, Roosevelt Island and its newly restored lighthouse, Hell Gate, the Hell Gate Bridge and RFK (Triborough Bridge), Wards and Randall’s Island, Astoria, North and South Brothers Island, Rikers Island, the giant Vernon C. Bain Prison Ship.
LaGuardia Airport, the Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges, College Point, Fort Schuyler and SUNY Maritime College, the US Merchant Marine Academy, the Throgs Neck, Stepping Stones and Execution Rocks Lighthouses, Hart and City Islands, New Rochelle, Glen Island, David’s Island where Fort Slocum, once stood, and the legendary North shore “Gold Coast” with a stunning array of 1920’s mansions that today, comprise the Sands Point Preserve, immortalized by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Great Gatsby. Near to the Sands Point Preserve stands the stalwart 1809 Sands Point Lighthouse, the third oldest lighthouse on Long Island.