July 27, 2026 Short Cruise to Oyster Bay

 July 27, 2026  Northport to Oyster Bay  17 miles and 2.5 hours

Fun weekend in Northport but time to move on.   Drop the mooring ball lines at 10:00 and head to the town dock.  Need to top off our water tank as we plan to be anchoring several days.   Decide to make the mile walk to the Stop-and-Shop grocery store to pick up a few more fresh veggies.  A bit strenuous walk as it's mostly uphill.  The walk back going downhill was much nicer.  Got off the town dock by noon and headed for Eatons Neck Point.   Wanted to check it out to see if we might stay there a few days as it's got good 360-degree wind protection.  

Osprey family taking in the view from the Eaton Neck entrance channel

Nice little harbor that's a Coast Guard station so all the surrounding property is theirs and no landing on the beaches is allowed.  Narrow channel in with limited anchoring room for a boat our size.  Biggest restraint is needing to stay out of the marked channel as it's used by the CG search and rescue boats.  We take into account the water depth, 7' tidal surge, scope required, and varying wind directions and strength. Yields an expected swing radius that would be a little too tight for comfort except for the one location already occupied by a sailboat. Just one of many such calculations we make every day.  So we opted to backtrack just a bit and head for Oyster Bay.  Numerous anchoring areas that offer protection from the various wind directions should we need to re-anchor.  While this whole area was called the Gold Coast during the heyday before the great depression, there remains plenty of wealthy people willing to build extravagant waterfront estates to keep the area exclusive.  Blue blood territory. Town has a reputation for not being the most transient friendly.  Example is a 20-minute limit at their town dingy dock. Strictly enforced. Seems odd as I would expect restaurants in town to welcome the business.  

Junior sailing lessons in Oyster Bay.  Guess if Biff and Buffy aren't
taking tennis lessons, they go out sailing.

A front is passing through on Tuesday with heavy rain and wind gusts to 25mph from the south before becoming northerly on Wednesday and Thursday with more rain.   We had gotten spoiled with so many blue sky, sunny and 80 degree days.   Guess it was inevitable a change would come at some point.

Journey for July 27, 2026