Rt 1 in Conn., is awful for the most part. Not a recommended bike route.
Better option is to head up thru Manhattan to the Bronx to Van Cortland Park. NYC bike maps are your friend in finding a route, there are tons of options.
Catch the Old Put trial in VCP, which becomes the South County Trail at the Westchester border. Take that north 11 miles to the 1 mile detour north on Rt 9A in Elmsford to Warehouse Lane - go left. At the end you find the North County trail - both the SCT and NCT are the paved rail-trails of the Old Put railroad.
At the Putnam County border, the NCT changes names, but continues over to Brewster. It's 55 miles one-way I believe from the south end of VCP to Brewster, with all as rail trial except the one mile detour. That gets you out into the countryside and north of the Rt 1 / I95 corridor.
I'd then start on local roads across northern Conn. to Mass.
This is probably a better route then attempting to head east thru Queens to Long Island and out to a ferry. That option is not bad, especially once you hit Nassau County as there are a lot of good bike friendly roads in Nassau and Suffolk. But if I were in Manhattan I'd head north.