Montauk Harbor hosted the 70th annual Blessing of the Fleet on Sunday evening. From the Viking Starship, Father Liam McDonald of St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church and the Rev. Bill Hoffmann of the Montauk Community Church dispensed prayers and holy water on the boats parading by.
“Everybody’s got their boats ready. The fish are showing up,” said John Aldridge, who co-owns the commercial fishing boat Anna Mary with Anthony Sosinski. If the names sound familiar, it’s because the two men are the authors of “A Speck in the Sea,” a book about Mr. Aldridge’s survival after being thrown overboard in 2013.
Mr. Aldridge and Mr. Sosinski host a party for the blessing every June, full of food, music, and fun. This year, their boat featured a singer, a tuba, and a Knicks flag to celebrate their N.B.A. championship win the night before. Guests dined on fresh-caught crab claws, smoked fish, clams, and ribs.
“This is our special day. I enjoy having our town come together and the food is just part of what we enjoy doing,” Mr. Sosinski said. “John and I caught the crabs. I took them home and steamed them. We caught the fish together and I smoked them in the smoker. I had to catch the seafood to buy the ribs. There’s a balance.”
While the day is a celebration, it’s also a time to honor the members of the Montauk fishing community who have died over the past year, with friends and family throwing wreaths and flowers into the water in their memory.
“It’s about bringing our community together and honoring everybody that was either lost at sea or worked on the water. What they do and what they did is not forgotten, and we as a community appreciate all of our water people and our town. And this is part of our town — celebrating and making sure we make it through another year,” Mr. Sosinski said.
The 2026 fishing season has gotten off to a slow start after a cold winter. “The water temperature has been cold. It’s warming up, but it’s about two weeks behind. You need a freeze every once in a while to shake things up,” Mr. Aldridge said. Ever the optimists, neither he nor Mr. Sosinski is concerned.
“The water is warming up, and we have summer now,” said Mr. Sosinski, before he hopped back onto his boat to break out the tuba once more.
