Island Profile: From the ferry wheel house, ‘the view is fantastic’

Sherri Surozenski, now a full-fledged captain on the South Ferry, has lived here on the Island all her life. In fact, she lives in the house that was her grandparents’, next door to her parents, Richie and Sharon, “down the hill from the hardware store.” She went to the Shelter Island school and “loved it, there were 12 in my graduating class.” Asked if, when a teenager she felt it was “the rock,” she laughed.

“Sure, although, yes, it’s the rock, it’s a good rock. I was lucky because I played sports and that got me off the rock every day. I still have a lot of friends on the south side.”  She’s still into Island team sports, a repeat Bowler of the Week for the Rockettes.

She doesn’t know how her grandparents came here originally or how they heard about it, but she thinks her dad, Fire Commissioner Richard Surozenski, was 7 or 8 when the family came and stayed.

She went to three colleges altogether over four years: Mitchell, University of Tampa, and SUNY Cortland. “But I never got the degree.” But she had gone to school with Cliff Clark’s daughters, so “Going to work on the ferry to make spending money on summer and school vacations was a natural thing to do.”

Glenn Waddington was the trainer for the South Ferry and when the work session to get the first license was actually held here on the Island, he urged her to take the class and she did. That led to her first license, “A six-pack, it’s called. That means you can charter up to six people on your boat and it does not have to be an inspected vessel.” She then took the next step, earning a 100-ton, inland waterways license for an inspected vessel. “To upgrade [from that] I would have to work on near-coastal waters or ocean waters but for this job, South Ferry, all that’s required is the 100-ton inland license.”

Asked what it was like to captain her first solo crossing, if she was scared, she answered, “Not really. In fact, I don’t actually remember it, because Glenn was always there so you didn’t really feel alone. The scary times were the first time I ran in choppy waters, when there were real rollers out there, the first time going across in really rough weather as a solo captain, that was one nerve-wracking time.

“And there was the first time I took the boat around to the east landing. You’re the only one on the boat, there’s no one else with you, so it’s you and the boat and you’re bringing it around, so you better know what you’re doing.” Asked how one ties the boat to the dock if there’s no deck hand on board, she replied, “Basically when you’re in the slip, you’re holding against something, you’re pushing the throttle to propel the boat forward, pushing [the boat] against the ramp, the rope really doesn’t do anything, it’s only there if for some reason we bounce back, something will grab us. So when I go into the slip I just put the boat to hold itself and then I can go and tie the boat up. But the first time? That was something else altogether.”

The ferry captain has to cope with the tides as well. “The tide’s flooding in the middle of the channel but it’s actually ebbing in front of the slip, so the flood is going from east to west and the ebb is from west to east. In the middle of the channel it’s going one way, in one direction and in front of the slip it’s going in the complete opposite direction.

“It’s just a big giant swirl out there, it’s an eddy. Actually you’re going out on the eddy and then you’re pushing up against the flood and then you’re taking the flood down and then you’re grabbing the eddy and going into the slip.” Casual? She makes it sound easy.

She went on to describe her job. “There are days we have a good time down here, today it’s a good crew, we’re pretty much friends down here. Everybody’s got their own little personalities and their own little quirks and that’s who they are. It’s an interesting place to work.

“Sometime in the dead of summer when it’s a hundred degrees and busy, then it’s just treacherous. But a day like today, it’s not so bad to be on deck but if it’s 10 degrees outside and blowing 40, with the wind chill factor, it’s better to be upstairs. The wheel house is a great place to be, it’s warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer and the view is fantastic.”

But it’s still just a tad unusual to see a woman at the wheel. In fact, there’s a bluegrass song about her, “Sherri on the Ferry,” recorded by Gene Casey of the Loan Sharks.  In the book, “Twenty Years of the Lone Sharks” by Yolanda Carruthers, Gene was asked, “Is ‘Sherri’ of the song ‘Sherri On The Ferry’ a real person?” His reply? “Most definitely! She’s a friend of ours and she indeed works on the ferry, on Shelter Island. We were worried that she wouldn’t welcome the attention but she’s taking it in stride.”

Which seems to be her style. So the next time, you’re going across, look up. If you see “a girl,” wave! It’s Sherri on the ferry.