What is that? Jan. 15, 2024

If you know, let us know. Send your responses to [email protected] or phone 631-275-1859.

Roger McKeon emailed us (see below, right) almost as soon as the paper hit his Post Office box:

“It’s a wheel chock on one of the ferries, right?”

Right, Roger.

And John Cronin texted us with the correct ID, specifically naming it as one on a North Ferry boat. Donald Card had the correct answer on our Facebook page, and so did Peggy Johnson Burke, who commented: “I always felt better once that was in place!”

Jeffrey Pinover was also right on the money.

Catherine Gowen of Princeton, N.J. gets an honorable mention for enthusiasm alone, but she said incorrectly that it was a “block to chock a boat-trailer wheel.”

An avid reader, she wrote to us about Island memories as a girl, who, with her family, went “swimming and collecting jingle shells at Shell Beach  — just the best.” 

According to North Ferry General Manager Bridg Hunt: “It is a Coast Guard requirement to chock the forward vehicles on a car ferry. The chock in the photo most likely was made by Greenport Yacht and Shipbuilding. We had ours made at the shipyard until we switched to synthetic ones. We have also found the chocks useful to stabilize vehicles with mechanical problems where the vehicle might roll backward.”