Politics & Government

Will the Thimble Island Ferry Service Stay Afloat?

A look at the history behind the ferry service and the current plans some have to maintain a transportation vessel.

It’s estimated that about 100 families inhabit about 30 of the Thimble Islands during the summer months. While some families have lived there for decades, historical text reveals that Branford residents have been going out to the islands for more than 200 years. According Archibald Hanna’s A Glimpse of the Thimble Islands published on the town website, the islands were used as pasture for livestock back in the 1700s. A boat, or “ferry," would take sheep out to the islands to graze during the summer months.

While much has changed­ and the sheep have been replaced by summer dwellers, there is still a need for ferry service, yet according to Anthony “Unk” DaRos, there is not enough traffic to keep the ferry business lucrative.

Since the ferry has been in service (Captain Dwight Carter and Captain Dick Howd), passengers have enjoyed swift trips to and from the town dock in Stony Creek for a reasonable price (current price is $5 one way). In recent years, shared Captain Bob Milne who now mans the Thimble Island Ferry and who is also the famed captain of the tour boat, the Volsunga IV, he makes about 32 cents an hour running the ferry service from spring to fall.

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He’s happy, he said, that the Thimble Islands Association has come up with a solution to support the ferry service.

State Representative’s Pat Widlitz (D-Guilford, Branford) and Lonnie Reed (D-Branford) along with State Senator Ed Meyer (D-Guilford) for the Thimble Islands Association, which passed both the House and the Senate., in order to help restore the ferry service The legislation, as per Connecticut code section 7-325, will allow the Thimble Islands to become their own taxing district.

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Like the Stony Creek Association, one of the oldest associations in Connecticut, the Thimble Island Association can now collect taxes based on a  mill rate and the town grand list. The highest they can tax is four mills, though DaRos thinks they will be taxing one tenth of a mill. The money raised from taxes would be used to support a ferry service. It has not yet been determined who will run the ferry service, though Milne said he has no intention to continue to do so in future years.

“I think it’s a good thing,” said Milne. “It’s their solution to keep the ferry working.” Of the Islanders, many of whom he knows well, Milne said the feelings about becoming a taxing district are “mixed.”

In order for the legislation to be valid, 15 island residents have to sign a petition and the First Selectman has to hold a meeting where the island residents vote to become a taxing district. DaRos said he intends to hold the meeting in Stony Creek on July 2 (check back for details).

From the late 1980s until the early 2000s, Bob Milne operated the Thimble Island Ferry in addition to running his sightseeing ferry. During an average summer, aboard his 25-passenger ferry vessel, Milne said he would make about 1,800 trips to the islands and back. He said he grew tired of the boat’s upkeep and the cost of the businesses. The profit, he added, was about $5,000 a year but that didn’t account for the time he spent running the boat. If he calculated the hours,  he said, the business was a loss for him.

He sold the boat to sightseeing competition Captain Mike Infantino who runs the Sea Mist Thimble Islands Cruise. He ran the ferry through 2009 and then sold it to a man in Guilford, reported Milne. The owner from Guilford, said Milne, operated the boat for a short time and then took off with the vessel.

From Memorial Day weekend through the end of July of 2010, there was no ferry operating to the Thimbles (read the New Haven Register story about it here). After seeing the need for service, Milne said he bought boat a six-passenger aluminum launch (boat). Instead of making 1,800 trips last summer, he said the number tripled. The businesses, he lamented, is less profitable than ever and continues to be so as it presently runs.

So when was the ferry business ever booming?

DaRos tells, back in the 1950s when he was schlepping coal and ice out to the Islander­s–before electricity was available to the summer homes–ferry riders shared trips with sightseeing tourists. There were five boats running in and out of the harbor, said DaRos, and people were coming and going all the time. He even recalls the 6:45 a.m. ferry as the “Daddy Boat”–the early trip that transported men from their summer homes to the mainland so they could take the train to New Haven or New York for work.

“Those days,” said DaRos, “are gone.”

A smaller population on the islands, the use of personal boats and a town ordinance have all contributed to the down fall of the ferry businesses. Created in the 1980s, the town ordinance, said DaRos, limited the number of sightseeing boats that could run to the Thimbles from its robust number to three. No longer is there room for the tourists and locals to mix. According to DaRos,, this is the biggest reason the ferry business has struggled to stay afloat.

With many of Branford’s neighborhoods already acting as their own taxing districts– the aforementioned Stony Creek, Short Beach, Pawson Park and East Indian Neck–it seems odd that the Thimble Islands is just now coming to this resolution. DaRos said, the thing the thing that kept them from becoming their own tax district: ‘They didn’t have a common problem.”

The “problem” for some Islanders is figuring out a dependable way in and out. “The ferry,” said Milne, “is the shepherd of the islands.”


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