Sailing in Southport Harbor

In Southport Harbor all vessels are secured bow to stern.  This allows room for more boats, but does pose some challenges.  Since boats are secured in "strings" of moorings (bow to stern tie up one boat after the other), so you need to be cautious sailing in the mooring field.  It's generally better to stay in the channel.  The strings of moorings have an orange ball at the beginning and end of each string with white mooring balls within the strings.  If you do need to enter the mooring field, use the visual clue of the orange mooring ball to know where a string ends.  You can pass safely on the side of the orange ball where there is not a boat or mooring gear.  Sometimes boats off their moorings leave a float line between moorings that connects their bow and stern mooring.  Be on the lookout for this so you do not sail and get tangled accidentally in a float line.

On most summer days the prevailing wind is southwest, which means that you will be tacking upwind when leaving the harbor and sailing downwind when coming home.  The photo on the left gives you a sense of where the channel is wider or narrower between strings of moorings.

As you sail out of the harbor you'll pass a relatively narrow spot between a beach to port (Country Club of Fairfield) and town docks to starboard.  It is deep up to a boat-length of each side.  Next you'll have the breakwater on your left.  Favor staying closer to the breakwater as there is shoal water on the Southport side.  Look for the muddy color water in the photo to the left to see the mud flats that lie just outside the channel.  Once past the breakwater the channel bends left.  Pay attention to the red nuns and green cans to follow the channel.

This photo is looking north into Southport harbor.  As you continue your sail out you want to pay attention to the channel markers until you get to the rockpile with the green daymarker on it (not shown in photo).  Pay particularly close attention to the boundary marked by the green cans.  You can see in this picture the pronounced shoal water that extends hundreds of yards beyond the Southport shore.  On the breakwater side of the channel you need to pay close attention to the red nun just south of the breakwater.  Once further out from there you can go either side of the red nuns as long as you stay relatively close to the channel.