Monday, August 2, 2010

Mattituck at Anchor

Leaving North Cove we stayed more in the middle of the channel and the lowest we saw was 10 feet at low tide. But, you have to pay attention to staying in the middle to take advantage of the 10 feet. It drops off on either side to 7 feet pretty quickly. There wasn’t much wind at first so we motored about ½ way went slow since we didn’t want to arrive at Mattituck before 2:00 so we would have a 3 foot tide to help us over the low spots.

After a bit the wind picked up and we sailed the last third of the way. Furling up the sails (roller furling is really nice!), we started our approach with eyes watching the depth sounder and the buoys. Corrected for the 3 foot tide, we saw 7 feet at the entrance over the bar. You could mostly see the low spots and it averaged about 8 feet the rest of the way until the last turn for the anchorage where we saw 5.5 feet for about 100 yards (corrected to low tide). The anchorage itself is marked with anchoring buoys and is 7 feet at low tide with good holding ground.

Town is only two blocks from the anchorage and has one of everything (hardware store, small grocery store, cheese shop (excellent selection!), Deli, Chocolate shop, restaurant, ATM and a few others. It’s very well kept. High tide tomorrow is at 5:30 am and then it starts falling. With that we’ll get an early start, I want a little insurance under the keel on the way out! A 7:00 am start will still give us about 4 feet of tide, then it’s on to Port Jefferson. We’re watching the tropical storm that’s developing down south but so far it’s not projected to be a hurricane. Needless to say, we’ll keep a close eye on it.

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