Spring temperatures are finally here, and Memorial Day weekend is only a few weeks away, but that does not mean the water is warm enough for any prolonged exposure. The Coast Guard cautions boaters around this time every year not to be fooled by the warmer air temperatures and to be very careful when venturing off dry land.

The Montauk Coast Guard has not had any water-related incidents so far this season. "Knock on wood, we've been pretty lucky this year. We haven't had any cases, but the potential is there. Just look at the amount of paddleboards on top of trucks," Jason Walter, chief of the Montauk station, said on Monday. "Even though the air temperature might be 70 and even 80, if you fall in the water, even if you have a life jacket on, your survivability is limited."

Hypothermia, which occurs when the body's core temperature falls below 95 degrees, sets in quickly, and can lead to death, as it affects the body's most vital organs, such as the brain, heart, and lungs. The loss of body heat occurs 25 times faster in cold water than in cold air.

Chief Walter said there are a lot variables, including a person's physical condition and size, however, "within 15 to 20 minutes, you start losing the motor skills in your hands and feet."

Nearby this past week, Coast Guard Station Shinnecock and Southampton bay constables kept busy with water-related accidents off the East End and Connecticut. One man lost his life.

The Riverhead Police Department received a call Sunday from someone aboard a sailboat that was taking on water about three miles north of Jacobs Point off Mattituck. Ciro Stellgas, 59, from Selden, was found dead on Monday after he and his boat, a 26-foot fiberglass sailboat went missing.

There were happier endings in three other incidents. Southampton Bay Constables rescued a 60-year-old bayman who stood on top of a fish trap net about 750 from shore after he slipped from the boat while working his traps and then lost contact with the boat, which drifted across Tiana Bay.

On the morning of April 30, a 62-year-old man fell in the water while getting off his boat at the Westhampton Beach Bath and Tennis Club. He yelled for help for about an hour before passersby called police. Westhampton Beach police helped him out of 43-degree water and he was taken to the hospital with symptoms of hypothermia, Southampton Town police said.

Over in Connecticut on Sunday, the Coast Guard rescued a 12-year-old girl whose canoe had capsized near Ocean Beach in New London. The girl was not wearing a life jacket and was with her dog. The John H. passenger ferry assisted and quickly deployed a life ring to the girl, who was showing signs of shock and hypothermia. Station New London's boat crew rescued her and a good Samaritan located the dog on shore.

"One of the key things to keep in mind is that even if it's warm out, the water is still cold," Walt Taylor, the 1st Coast Guard District's Recreational Boating Safety specialist, said in a statement from the Coast Guard. "When a person falls in cold water, their body responds to the initial shock with an instantaneous gasp for air, which, if their head is underwater, may cause the person to swallow water and drown."

Wearing a lifejacket will help keep your head above water in the event of an emergency.

"By the time you fall in the water, it's probably too late to try and put on a lifejacket," said Mr. Taylor. "It only works if you wear it."

Chief Walter said the Coast Guard is also asking anyone who owns a personal watercraft to put something on it that provides a name and phone number. The Coast Guard has specially-made waterproof stickers available at any of its stations.

"These things wash up on the beach. When we come upon them in the water we have to treat them as missing persons," he said. Unlike boats, which have registrations, kayaks, paddleboards, and canoes cannot be traced.

An elderly driver lost control of his sport utility vehicle causing a four-car accident in downtown Sag Harbor on Tuesday afternoon.

The man, whose name was not immediately released, was backing up out of a diagonal parking space on the east side of Main Street, near the Golden Pear, when the accident occurred just before 3 p.m.

His Mercedes S.U.V. reportedly spun around in a circle, hitting the signs posted in the median, nearly hitting a S.U.V. heading south, and then slamming into the back of a parked pickup truck. His Mercedes hit the pickup truck with such force that he pushed it onto the sidewalk, up against a bench. He then hit a Hyundai Sonata, parked next to the truck, sending the Sonata into the parked Cadillac Escalade next to it.

A bystander said the wheels on the Mercedes S.U.V. were smoking afterwards.

Sag Harbor Village Police Officer Kenneth Marangio said he saw the accident and rushed to help.

No one was hurt.

“The Affair,” a Showtime series for which a pilot was filmed here last fall, has been picked up for a season’s production — good news for its producers, but not so welcome for residents of Amagansett’s Beach Hampton neighborhood who were disturbed by truck noise and lights when nighttime taping took place at a Marine Boulevard house.

The show’s creators have returned to East Hampton Town officials for permission to film from May 27 through June 4 at various locations, including the Amagansett house, and the town board discussed the matter with them at a work session on Tuesday. Beach Hampton residents were there as well to voice their concerns.

“Last year’s film shoot in the Amagansett dunes was not a pleasant experience,” Diana Walker, a neighborhood resident, told the board.

“Friday night, shooting all night. Friday is when people come out,” said Rona Klopman, president of the Amagansett East neighborhood association.

Last year, she said, “multiple streets were blocked . . . so it’s very burdensome to the community, what they intend to do.”

Chris Goode, a producer, said that the show’s pilot established the Marine Boulevard house as the residence of a key character in “The Affair,” a drama that, according to Showtime, explores “the psychological effects of an affair between a married waitress at a Hamptons diner and a teacher who spends the summer at his in-laws’ estate on the island.” If not for that, he said, they would move the shoot to a house where disruption to the neighborhood could be minimized. Should the show be successful, he said, a new residence for the character could be established at the start of a second season.

Although according to town code, a filming permit is normally issued by the town clerk without board review, Carole Brennan, the clerk, sought board members’ approval because of controversy and complaints after the five-day shoot in Amagansett last year.

This year, the site would be used for just one night. In light of that, and of the precedent set by the permission granted in the fall, a board majority agreed Tuesday that the permit should be issued. Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby suggested excluding the Beach Hampton house from the list of approved filming locations, or modifying the hours that the house could be used.

Perhaps, Ms. Overby said, the character’s residence could be altered between the pilot of the program and the inception of its regular episodes, instead of waiting for a subsequent season.

The drama was created by Sarah Treem, of “House of Cards,” the popular Netflix series starring Kevin Spacey, and Hagai Levi, whose credits include the program “In Treatment.” It stars Dominic West.

“Congratulations,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell told Mr. Goode. “I’m very happy that you’ve chosen our town to use,” he said. “My concern is going to center on the disruption to quiet residential neighborhoods.” “The devil’s in the details here,” he said. The supervisor grilled Mr. Goode and Andrew Poppoon, an assistant location manager, about just what would happen on May 30, when the Beach Hampton shoot is planned from noon to 1 or 2 a.m.

This time around, the crew has proposed using an alternate parking spot, perhaps at Atlantic Avenue beach, for its large equipment trucks and bringing only smaller trucks down the tight Beach Hampton streets. Neighbors’ driveways will also be rented for additional space.

Accommodating the film and television industry here has “economic value to the community,” Mr. Cantwell said. “I do get extremely sensitive, though, when people are inconvenienced to any significant degree.” “I’m going to expect you to live to the letter of your permit requirements,” the supervisor told the production company's representatives.

“Period. No exceptions.” And, he said, “If we issue permits for this, we’re not locking in to any future permits for you whatever.” Mr. Goode said that three episodes would be taped in June, and that additional production here is planned for July.

The show’s first season will comprise nine consecutive episodes, he said.

“In September, I want you to feel good that we followed the rules,” he told the board. “Where we need clarification is, what are the rules? Because we wouldn’t have gone to this neighborhood.. . .”

“One of the issues that’s come up,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said Tuesday, “is that the town doesn’t really have a set of rules with regard to what this kind of filming can bring.” Last year, a filming permit was issued to the crew of “The Affair” by the town clerk’s office, according to procedure, without discussion by the town board.

Bill Wilkinson, the former supervisor, however, was apprised of the proposal by Fred Overton, then the town clerk and now a councilman, who referred the film location manager to the supervisor.

Residents who complained to the town board about the impacts of the shoot last fall were criticized by Mr. Wilkinson, who called their complaints “capricious and silly,” and by former Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who accused them of a political ploy against Republicans.

Mr. Van Scoyoc suggested last fall that the board discuss instituting a review process when film or television production permit applications call for extensive activity. East Hampton residents, he said then, should have a chance to weigh in on what they would tolerate.

On Tuesday, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez offered to undertake a review of the town’s regulations and fees for film permits.

Ms. Klopman suggested that the town should significantly increase the daily fees charged for filming, which are now $250, and, she said, a fraction of those charged in other municipalities. “The fees should be proportional to the value of the shoot,” she said.

In one instance in South Carolina, she said, the fee is $1,500 a day, or 1 percent of the film company’s gross expenditures for the shoot, and filming is prohibited in certain neighborhoods.

All costs incurred by the town related to the taping, such as for police services, will be paid by the production company. For the film shoot last fall, the Showtime production paid the town a total of $30,100.

Additional taping this year will take place in Montauk at Deep Hollow Ranch, Turtle Cove, the train station, along Montauk Highway, and in the dock area, and at the Lobster Roll restaurant on Napeague.

Sean MacPherson, a well-known impresario of metropolitan hotels and restaurants who brought his high-end empire to Montauk in 2010 when he opened the Crow’s Nest Inn and Restaurant, has been told he needs permission for his newest project in the hamlet after running afoul of the East Hampton Town Building Department.

According to town officials, Mr. MacPherson had begun interior and exterior renovations of a defunct motel, which he added to his Montauk holdings last year, without obtaining a building permit, prompting Tom Prieato, the town’s chief building inspector, to issue a stop-work order. To resume work, he needs site plan approval from the town planning board, which discussed the matter on April 23. It became clear that  site plan approval would not be routine.

The 66,333-square-foot rectangular parcel, like the Crow’s Nest a few lots to the west, is on the southern shore of Lake Montauk. In a memo to the planning board from JoAnne Pahwul, assistant director of the East Hampton Town Planning Department, Mr. MacPherson’s new property, which is adjacent to South Lake Drive, a town right of way to the beach, was developed in the 1950s as the Montauk Motor Court. In 1986, when the business received its last certificate of occupancy, it was described as containing four one-story buildings with two units each, plus an office and a one-story residence. Mr. MacPherson also owns a house in Ditch Plain, a short walk away.

According to Mr. Preiato, 7,150 square feet of what was previously open lawn there has been converted to a gravel-covered parking lot, capable of holding 24 cars. The property has another parking lot, which can accommodate 12 cars.

“Right now, parking is a problem on the Crow’s Nest property,” Britton Bistrian, Mr. MacPherson’s representative, told the planning board on April 23. She said parking for the popular Crow’s Nest “on Montauk Highway causes a safety issue. This owner is motivated and wants to address the safety issue and not just turn a blind eye.”

Also raising warning flags were several board members who expressed concern about whether allowing a separate lot to absorb overflow parking from the Crow’s Nest would legal.

 Job Potter, a member of the board, who pointed out the proximity of the parcel to a town lot that contains wetlands, addressing another issue, asking John Jilnicki, the board’s attorney, whether Mr. MacPherson would also need a natural resources permit from the town zoning board of appeals. Mr. Jilnicki gave an affirmative response.

“Helping overflow parking would be good, but moving that problem to another property is troubling,” Mr. Potter said.

Yesterday, Mr. Jilnicki brought up another sticking point, pointing out that a new parking lot appeared to be an expansion of the business use on the property, which is prohibited by the town code because it is in zoned residential use.

“Commercial parking for a business off-premises would likely be construed as an expansion of use by the building inspector,” he said yesterday, although he added that Mr. Preiato has not yet ruled on the issue.

It appears from the Crow’s Nest website that both properties are to be run as one business. “We are pleased to announce the new addition of the David Pharaoh Cottages adjacent to the Crow’s Nest on South Lake Drive. The cottages are available for rent on a weekly basis, and come complete with all the amenities of the Crow’s Nest,” the site reads. The cottages are named for a chief of the Montauketts.

Rentals for the David Pharaoh units are priced between $1,200 and $1,700 for a week in early June.

 A driver who police said struck and killed a bicyclist from Florida Friday evening on County Road 39 in Southampton was arrested and charged with drunken driving. Bail was set Saturday morning in the courtroom of Southampton Town Justice Edward Burke Sr. at $25,000 for Jesse Werner Steudte, 21, of Southampton, who pleaded not guilty.

Neil S. Fife, 29, from Jupiter, Fla., was on a bicycle attempting to cross the highway in a marked crosswalk during the Friday evening rush of weekend traffic at Sandy Hollow Road when he was struck and killed by an eastbound Jeep being driven by Mr. Steudte at about 6:28, police said. "Civilians in the area immediately started CPR on Fyfe," police said in a statement. He was taken by ambulance to Southampton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Mr. Steudte was treated for minor injuries before being arrested, police said. The Southampton and North Sea Fire Departments were on the scene, with police closing the highway in both directions. The Suffolk County district attorney's vehicular crime unit and the New York State Police forensic identification and collision reconstruction unit were on hand to assist Southampton detectives. The highway was closed to traffic until about 2 a.m.

Mr. Steudte's father was in the courtroom for the arraignment, as were 11 other friends and family members. "Okay, all right, folks," Justice Burke said to the supporters of Mr. Steudte who were seated in the courtroom. "A real tragedy here, but let's go through the process."

Colin Astarita, representing Mr. Steudte, told the justice that his client had consented to have his blood drawn after the accident to determine its alcohol level. Maggie Bopp from the Suffolk district attorney's office said in court that Mr. Steudte had admitted that he had been drinking, and also said that he was the driver of the 1990 Jeep when it struck Mr. Fife. He was alone in the car at the time.

Mr. Astarita asked that Mr. Steudte be released without bail, or at least to have bail set at $5,000. Ms. Bopp asked for bail to be set at $150,000.

Mr. Astarita argued that the signs of intoxication police reported for Mr. Steudte could have been the result of the trauma caused by the accident itself.

"There was an admission that he had consumed alcohol," Ms. Bopp countered. Justice Burke told the courtroom that he had to consider "what was coming down the road," legally, for Mr. Steudte, as he set bail at $25,000, cash.

Mr. Steudte's father, a tall man, as is Mr. Steudte, left the courthouse with a piece of paper on which was written the bail information. A friend stopped him on the courthouse steps and asked how much they needed to raise. Mr. Steudte, visibly distraught, pointed to the white piece of paper. "This or this," he said.

The results of the blood test will be known in about two weeks, Mr. Astarita said.

Ms. Bopp promised a swift move to indictment on multiple felony charges if the test indicates Mr. Steudte was intoxicated at the time of the accident. 

Melville Straus, a longtime champion of Guild Hall as its chairman and a distinguished and successful businessman, died after a long illness with brain cancer on Thursday in New York City. Mr. Straus, who was known as Mickey, was 75. 

For many years, he and his wife, Leila, spent summers and weekends in a beautiful residence filled with local artists (great and unknown) set on Hook Pond in East Hampton. He joined Guild Hall's board in 1992 and became chairman three years later. The founder and chief programmer of the cultural center's Hamptons Institute, he led Guild Hall's $14 million capital campaign for the renovations of its building and grounds, which were completed in 2009. He retired last year.

"Since my first meeting with Mickey Straus 15 years ago, he was my best friend," Ruth Appelhof, Guild Hall's director, said on Monday. "He was mentor, sage, magician, pied piper and visionary. He made Guild Hall the vibrant institution it is today."

Barbara Jo Howard, the director of marketing and public relations, recalled his "joyful love of the arts, a kind and sincerely generous heart, and a genuine respect for all people. He was a very rare and special person."

After graduating from Dartmouth College and Harvard University, where he received an M.B.A. and was a Baker Scholar, he had a long career in the investment industry and since 1998 has been head of Straus Asset Management. In addition to Guild Hall, he has served as a board or committee member of many arts-related institutions. These include the American Ballet Theater, Museum of Modern Art, Independent Curators, Inc., and American Friends of the Royal Ballet School. He was also a member of the Dartmouth President's Leadership Council and of the Board of Visitors at the John Sloan Dickey Center. He served previously on the Board of Overseers of the Hopkins Center/Hood Museum at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth Alumni Council.

He leaves behind his wife, three children: Scott Straus of Madison, Wisc., Alexandra Straus of Los Angeles, and Ben of New York City, and two grandchildren. Two sisters, Margie Stein of San Diego and Mary Straus of Tucson, and a brother, John Straus of Denver, also survive him.

A private memorial service will be held on Thursday. A full obituary will appear in this week's Star.

The Montauk beach protection project offered up by the Army Corps of Engineers at a presentation at East Hampton Town Hall on April 23 — a freebie, at full federal expense, under a fast-tracked post-Hurricane Sandy repair program — proved a disappointment to some hoping for an immediate, large-scale beach reconstruction.

“It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye,” said New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who attended the presentation. “It provides protection, it gets the state and the feds involved in what has to be done for Montauk, but I share the hope that when we are in the second phase of this thing, that we can come up with a more robust sand renourishment for downtown Montauk.”

In the near term, the Corps plan calls for stabilizing the beach by installing sand-filled geotextile bags, buried under three feet of sand, until more extensive work can be done.

“It falls far short of anything meaningful,” said Steve Kalimnios of Montauk. As an owner of the Royal Atlantic motel on the ocean, he said he has continually had to place considerably larger amounts of sand on the beach to protect his building. “I do not want to be ungrateful for what is being put forward,” he said, “but it needs to be larger.”

The $6 million project is considered an interim fix “to bridge the gap,” according to Steve Couch of the Army Corps, until the implementation of a full-scale Atlantic coast reconstruction project called the Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation Project, or FIMP.

The Army Corps study of how to rebuild and protect 83 miles of Long Island shoreline has stretched longer than four decades, but specific projects have now been authorized and federally funded, and shoreline beach fill projects under FIMP’s scope, including one at Montauk, could begin by spring 2016.

However, two severely eroded beaches, at Fire Island and downtown Montauk, were selected after Sandy for immediate work. Preliminary discussions with the Army Corps last fall about project options included more extensive work, such as rebuilding and extending the width of the beach and installing new dunes with a stone core.

But under new federal guidelines, Mr. Couch explained last week, those projects do not qualify for the interim program, based on the Corps analysis of costs and benefits.

The geotextile bags are to be smaller in size and shape than the “geotubes” used on a Sagaponack beach, which caused beach scouring similar to what a hard structure would have caused, and eventually failed. They would be about 5 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 1 foot high when filled, and weigh over 2 tons each. They would be placed in front of the dune along a 3,100-foot span of beach in front of the downtown hotels. The bags would be covered with a minimum of three feet of sand, and a 45-foot wide berm would be created in front of them, using 45,000 cubic yards of sand.

They would be expected to be effective for 15 years, reducing potential storm damages by 75 percent, said Mr. Couch.

An aggressive schedule laid out for the project requires the town to give the okay within the next few weeks, and, after environmental assessments and public comment periods, for construction to begin in December and last about six months. If begun late this year, said Anthony Ciorra of the Army Corps, it will extend into the 2015 summer season.

“Obviously, we don’t want construction within our season here,” Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said.

Paul Monte, the head of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, said at the meeting that it was “very exciting” that a Montauk beach project could soon get under way. He thanked all involved, but, he said, “I am a little disappointed in what’s being proposed.”

The more extensive storm protection and beach reconstruction project,  “meant to function over a longer time period” under the Fire Island to Montauk project, would likely entail adding a volume of sand that would replenish the beach and create a “feeder beach” that would continue to offset erosion through natural sand migration, said Mr. Couch. The geotextile-bag reinforced dune would be compatible with the eventual larger project, he said.

 Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell expressed “concern that this project has become bifurcated. Doing the emergency project,” as described, he said, “leaves Montauk vulnerable until FIMP is completed.”

The Army Corps, said Mr. Couch, “must select a plan that maximized the benefit relative to the cost.” However, the short-term proposal could still be revised, he said.

Mr. Cantwell said that the town would try to make a case for the immediate construction of a feeder beach by submitting additional data about the economic and recreational value of a maximized Montauk beach.

While the Corps originally requested a response from the town about the proposed project by next week, Sue McCormick of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the state partner in the project, said last week that the deadline could be stretched to mid-May.

A local sponsor — the county or the town — must sign on, and would be responsible for keeping the bags covered with sand, for monitoring the project, and for maintenance. Mr. Couch said that the type of storm estimated to occur every 5 or 10 years could cause enough damage to the sandbags and berm that maintenance would be required. However, federal money could be available for repairs after certain kinds of storms that meet particular federal criteria.

Thomas Muse of the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation expressed concern at last week’s meeting about the ongoing costs to the town. And, he said, “I don’t know if we want to go downtown to the beach and see sandbags”

Christopher Poli of the Ditch Plains Association said that consideration should be given to protecting the beach at Ditch as well, especially given the cost-benefit analysis to which the Army Corps subjects its projects. While there are 8 to 10 structures within the federally drawn flood zone in Montauk’s downtown, he said, there are 128 “principal structures” and 122 trailers in the Ditch Plain area at risk. “I implore you to include Ditch Plains as a feeder beach,” he said. “Ditch Plains needs to be addressed before a storm, not after a storm,” he said.

“I am blown away and extremely disappointed that the Corps has not included the Ditch Plains area in their short-term solution,” said Scott Bradley, who said he was a new owner of the East Deck Motel at Ditch Plain.

“The focus of our stabilization effort has been downtown Montauk,” said Mr. Couch. However, he said, after a request by the town board last fall to include the Ditch Plain area, the Corps is “re-looking at Ditch Plains . . . in the context of the overall reformulation study.”

Tom Knobel commented that the tight schedule laid out by the Corps “hardly allows for any sort of redesign,” of the project although, he said, “it is obvious that it needs to be enlarged.”

Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, questioned the Army Corps estimate of the ongoing maintenance costs for the sand-filled bags of $60,000 annually, in light of much larger figures cited by Mr. Kalimnios about what he has spent. “Before we sign anything, we’ve got to know the numbers,” Mr. Samuelson said. “We’re potentially signing on to something that could blow us out of the water as far as the 2-percent tax cap,” he said, regarding the state-imposed limit on annual property tax increases.

Mr. Kalimnios offered his “complete support in moving forward with both projects in the most expeditious manner.”

Rameshwar Das, an author of the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program plan, said that before the federal emergency beach-protection money became available post-Sandy, the town had been discussing establishing an erosion protection tax district for downtown Montauk or elsewhere, in order to cover the costs of reconstruction projects.

“You make a good point,” Supervisor Cantwell said. “In the longer term, we need to have this conversation,” he said, about “projects we might want to take on ourselves” and to “develop a long-term mechanism to deal with these issues going forward.”

While many details remain to be determined, he said, on the positive side “There is pretty good, strong consensus of opinion in the community — especially in Montauk — about moving forward.”

Neither snow nor cold nor the gloom of early nightfall this winter stayed Hamptons real estate agents from completion of their daily rounds.

All that trekking over ice-slick driveways seems to have paid off. Total sales volume across the South Fork for this year’s first quarter was $641 million, higher than it has been in seven years, since the boom of 2007, when it reached nearly $1 billion. Volume was more than four times what it was in 2009 and almost double the number in 2011.

Sales soared 52 percent from last year to 528 transactions, according to Douglas Elliman Real Estate’s first-quarter report. The Elliman report is compiled by an outside party, the Miller Samuel appraisal company.

If the weather hadn’t been so inhospitable, the numbers for the past quarter “would have been one for the record books,” Patrick McLoughlin, an agent with Elliman, said.

A report in Bloomberg News attributed the rise to “stock-market gains and fatter Wall Street bonuses,” which certainly seem to have played a part.

“Over all, the financial markets had a very strong year in 2013,” said Debra Reece, a broker with Sotheby’s International Realty. “Wall Street is a driver of the Hamptons real estate market.” Her company saw many financial whizzes out here making investments or first-time purchases or trading up. “We saw a lot of activity in the very high end — $25 million plus.”

Things weren’t so bad in the high-ish end either, with 27 properties selling for $5 million or more, up from eight last year. In both total volume and total units, the most significant gains were concentrated in price ranges from $3 million to over $10 million, according to the Long Island Real Estate Report.

According to Town and Country’s first-quarter report, the local market with the largest sales volume was “the Big Kahuna,” Southampton Village, “where the total home sales volume exploded nearly 1,000%!” over the same period in 2013. On the other hand, the total sales volume for “the East Hamptonrea,” including Wainscott but excluding East Hampton Village, was down 25 percent.

But wait a minute. Do we really get an accurate picture comparing this year’s first quarter to the same time last year? Last year’s first quarter was notoriously slow, seeing that it followed an artificially high final quarter in 2012. That time span, when real estate lawyers’ offices were open even on New Year’s Eve to accommodate buyers rushing to close before a coming change in tax laws, certainly had an impact on first-quarter sales last year.

“Many closings were pushed forward to close in 2012 that otherwise would have closed in [2013’s] first quarter,” said Ms. Reece — a fact that clearly skewed comparisons.

Comparing only first quarters with their prior equivalents can be misleading, according to Anthony DeVivio, the managing director of Halstead Properties in the Hamptons, who recommends also looking at preceding third and fourth quarters. While the average sales price this quarter on the South Fork was up a whopping 40 percent from last year’s first quarter, it was only up 8 percent compared to October, November, and December of last year, according to the Elliman report.

Ms. Reece defended the usual apple-to-apple quarter comparisons. “A comparable sales analysis [comparing same time frames] will typically take into account anything that’s cyclical or seasonal in nature.” Yet, even taking that one-time tax anomaly into account, Ms. Reece iterated that “the first quarter of 2014 was still extremely strong.” About 30 more houses sold during this quarter than last fall’s. Sotheby’s had not released its first-quarter report by press time.

Inventory also increased — up 8 percent from last year’s fourth quarter and 18 percent from its first quarter, the Elliman report said — with sellers inundating a healthy market with listings. But the length of time those listings were on the market fell nominally.

Despite a slew of first-quarter reports, as usual we won’t be able to see many of those sales for several more weeks. Mr. DeVivio said that Halstead refuses to publish its results for at least 60 days after the quarter’s end, when he’s confident the significant data is in. With other firms rushing to print their reports, they are compromising accuracy, he believes. “This is not a marketing piece; it’s a research piece,” he said. “We want to make sure it’s as accurate as possible.”

Having said that, he agrees with the reports out so far. When all is said and done, “there is no doubt that [this year’s] first quarter will show a dramatic increase over last year’s.”

As the buds on trees begin to explode and more prospects feel the urge to repair to the country, second-quarter sales will surely give a clearer picture of the current market status.

It was “one of the largest investment frauds in Long Island history,” said a federal district attorney on Tuesday after Brian R. Callahan of Old Westbury, 44, pleaded guilty to securities and wire fraud in connection with his purchase of Montauk’s failing Panoramic View resort.

Prosecutors from the office of Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, had accused Mr. Callahan of diverting monies deposited by investors in his mutual and hedge funds to prop up the motel’s shaky finances. With his brother-in-law and co-defendant, Adam J. Manson, a New York resident with offices in Montauk and Great Neck who has pleaded not guilty and will be tried later, he ran a Ponzi scheme that eventually defrauded investors of some $118 million, of which $96 million has yet to be recovered.

 The two men bought the resort for $32 million in October 2006. By that time, the D.A. charged, Mr. Callahan, in his capacity as an investment adviser, had already set up a number of offshore shell accounts, creating various hedge funds that held out the promise of multimillion-dollar profits. Each fund, Ponzi-like, would hide the losses of the ones previously created. Mr. Manson is not named in any of those schemes, in which Mr. Callahan is said to have exercised sole control.

The Montauk Fire Department turned over its $600,000 scholarship fund in February 2008 to Mr. Callahan before thinking better of it and pulling the money out in time, after fire commissioners became wary.

The brothers-in-law had planned to sell the Panoramic units as co-ops. They borrowed $45 million from an unnamed financial institution to cover the purchase and renovations, but ran into trouble early on at the start of the long recession. With the units languishing on the market, they found themselves unable to meet the bank note, and, facing foreclosure, ramped up a series of come-ons designed to cover their losses. These included the fire department funds; commissioners were told the money would be invested in mutual funds. Instead, it went to cover the ever-widening debt. Mr. Callahan, who was said to be living the high life, created fake books to cover his crimes, according to the grand jury that indicted him.

In February 2012 his independent auditor resigned. That was the beginning of the end: the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in the following month.

Under the terms of a plea agreement, Mr. Callahan now faces up to 40 years in prison. As part of the deal, he agreed to forfeit $67.4 million to the government as a fine, including money received from the sale of his properties in Westhampton and Old Westbury. He will be sentenced on Aug. 8 in Central Islip, in the courtroom of U.S. Magistrate Judge A. Kathleen Tomlinson. He remains free on a $2 million bond secured by homes belonging to his sister and father. Zugiel Soto of the D.A.’s office said Mr. Callahan’s victims would be allowed to speak as part of the sentencing process.

The 10-acre beachfront Panoramic, meanwhile, remains under the ownership of the brothers-in-law. The company did not respond to a phone inquiry made yesterday.

Turn used fishing nets into skateboards. An idea that would have seemed utopian green only a few years ago is being brought to fruition by three surfers with engineering degrees and a shared goal of ridding the ocean of plastic pollution, ghost nets in particular.

The ghosts in question are drift, or dragged, nets that continue to snag fish and marine mammals long after they are either lost or dumped at sea. A campaign to fund the first production run is now in progress through Kickstarter.com.

It all began in 2011 when Kevin Ahearn Jr. of Montauk and East Hampton, David Stover of Block Island, and Ben Kneppers, a Cape Cod native, met up in Sydney, Australia.

Mr. Ahearn was there at the tail end of a 10-month, around-the-world backpacking trip he undertook after leaving a job with a small engineering firm in Greenport. He subsequently joined the Boeing company in Huntington Beach, Calif., for two years before launching head-on into the net-to-skateboard metamorphosis.

He and Mr. Stover graduated from Lehigh University in 2007 with engineering degrees, Mr. Stover with a concentration in finance. Mr. Kneppers, graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in sustainability. He moved to Chile two years ago to help with government efforts in his field.

“We are all surfers, grew up on the beach, me here, Dave on Block Island, Ben on Cape Cod. Dave Stover was living in Indonesia for a while, and I was in Southern California, and were aware of the problem of ghost nets and plastic pollution,” Mr. Ahearn said during an interview at Ditch Plain Beach in Montauk on Monday.

“The juices started flowing in Australia, the seed of the idea. We agreed we had the skill sets to do something about ocean pollution. We realized the potential of our collaborative careers at that time, but it was over the next two years that we started putting the pieces together and really making things happen,” Mr. Ahearn said.

Mr. Kneppers had learned that discarded fishing nets had become a serious problem in Chile. The country did not have the money or the infrastructure to deal with it. Mr. Ahearn explained that Chilean fishermen used nets made of nylon that typically wore out in about six months.

“They have to pay to dump the nets in private landfills, and as a result manyare cut loose at sea. Ten percent of the plastic pollution found in the world’s oceans takes the form of fishing gear, dangerous for marine mammals and the ecosystem,” Mr. Ahearn said.

“We started talking to the World Wildlife Fund in Chile. They advised us. By this time last year we realized we had something tangible,” he said, that being a continuous supply of material that was almost all nylon, collection points for fishermen to leave their nets, and trucking companies — already hauling fish and supplying the fishing industry — willing to take the nets to Santiago, the nation’s capitol. They named their company Bureo Inc., “bureo” being the word for wave in the Mapuche language of Chile’s indigenous people.

The three amigos traveled to Boston to pick the brains of engineers who worked with plastics in order to develop a process for recycling the nets. They brought the process back to Santiago where a plastics manufacturer, one of South America’s leading recycling companies, had the machinery and liked the idea. The nets would be cleaned, melted down, and turned into pellets for storage — “We call them skateboard sperm,” Mr. Ahearn said. From there, the pellets would be melted again, and injected into a one-ton, steel mold, “like a big waffle iron,” that produces the skateboard blanks.

Mr. Ahearn said products made from fishing nets are not limited to skateboards alone.

“Midsummer of 2013, we all moved to Chile and spent six months turning our computer models to work,” he said. The surfing engineers got a leg up from the Chilean government’s Start-up Chile program designed specifically to attract global entrepreneurs. “They gave us $40,000, a place to live, and a place to work.”

As he explained the short history of his endeavor on Monday, a group of Ditch Plain regulars listened intently while inspecting and approving of a fish-shaped prototype of the skateboard.

Once the skateboard blanks are finished in Chile, they will be sent to the Satori Wheels company in California. Satori will supply the “trucks,” as the wheel and axel hardware are known. “Their wheels are 30-percent vegetable based instead of petroleum-based urethane.” At first, the skateboards will be sold through the company’s website, bureoskateboards.com, then through shops “that speak to our message,” Mr. Ahearn said, that being green and sustainable.

Bureo’s goal is to raise at least $25,000 to pay for the first production run to test the market. “By donating to Kickstarter you are rewarded with a skateboard,” Mr. Ahearn said, adding that while the goal was close to being met, “we want people to know that for every additional dollar, we will be able to return to Chile and expand the program faster and make a bigger impact.”

Those interested in helping with the endeavor can go to Kickstarter.com and search for Bureo.