WHILE private cruising and fishing boats get ever bigger, the creeks, inlets and bays on the East End of Long Island are not getting any deeper or wider.
This property, on a Mattituck inlet, is listed for $2.695 million.
And as owners of East End summer homes seek to accommodate their new vessels by building docks in deeper water, they are meeting with resistance from local and environmental authorities.
Generally, there are more docks jutting out into the calmer waters of the North Fork, sheltered from the ocean by the Hamptons on the South Fork. But many of those northern docks lie in shallow water. A dock must often extend more than 100 feet into a bay or inlet to reach deepwater minimums of six feet at low tide.
“Ten years ago, you would have seen very few people, maybe a handful, looking specifically for deepwater dock properties,” said Lee Carlson, a real estate broker in the Southold office of Prudential Douglas Elliman. “I’ve talked to 10 people in the last month who had bigger boats and wanted a house with a dock to keep them there.”
There are some exceptions, like Sag Harbor on the South Fork, whose waters are deep enough for 100-foot yachts, and snug harbors on Shelter Island (between the forks). But, those aside, Mr. Carlson said, many East End docks are on creeks and inlets, where the water may be no more than three feet deep at low tide.
Water depth is therefore an influence on prices. A home in Southold with a dock on the Peconic or Gardiners Bay, which together separate the North and South Forks, could cost nearly $10 million, for example, while a similar property on a shallower creek or inlet could range from $2 million to $4 million. (Of course, another factor in such price disparities is that homes on the bay have sandy beaches, open vistas and sunset views, while a home on a creek looks out on a narrow channel.)
Demand for deepwater permits has increased so significantly in Southold that Scott Russell, the town supervisor, is working with the town council on a law that would ban all new private docks on the bay.
“The bay is a collective body owned by everybody,” Mr. Russell said, “not just by the waterfront property owners with docks.” If the town allows more docks, “you start to restrict the public use and benefit of that bay.”
The problem is not “the one or two docks here and there,” he added, “but what are you going to do about the 20 or 30 down the road?”
A less drastic solution than building a dock out to deeper water, he pointed out, is to moor bigger boats farther from the shoreline with an anchor.
One reason for the increase in boat size — these days the larger ones range from 40 to 80 feet long — is better handling technology, said Mr. Carlson, who explained that as a former yacht captain, he had piloted big boats from Maine to Florida.
For example, a small electronically controlled propeller, added to the front of a large boat and oriented at a right angle to the rear propeller, makes it steerable sideways, into position beside a dock.
To build or extend a dock requires permits from a number of agencies, including the state Department of Environmental Conservation. In Southold, a permit is also required from a board of trustees that administers laws affecting waterways and wetlands. Each group sends a representative to inspect the site.
“The policy of the board is pretty much to discourage docks on the bay,” said James King, a lobsterman who has been a trustee in Southold for 12 years. It’s not even practical to have a boat tied up to a dock on the open bay, Mr. King contends, explaining that winds can thrash the vessel into the structure — which juts out, obstructs moving vessels and abets beach erosion, he said.
“It’s a thorny issue,” Mr. King said. “People who live on the water feel they have a right to have a dock, but their property rights end at the high-water mark; then they’re on public land.”
Over on the South Fork, which is bordered by the bay and the Atlantic Ocean, “there’s not a lot of deep water” that is sheltered from storms, said Lawrence Porter, of the Westhampton Beach real estate office of Brown Harris Stevens.
But there are still some choice properties with deepwater docks. Steve Madden, the shoe retailer, recently rented four cottages with a deepwater dock big enough for two boats on a canal in the village of Quogue for $260,000 for the season, Mr. Porter said.
Farther east, on Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton, East Hampton Point has been for sale for two years, for $55 million. The price includes a 58-slip marina in deep water, 13 cedar-sided cottages, an English manor with 20 guest suites, and a 400-seat restaurant, according to Janet Hummel, a part owner of Town and Country Real Estate.
Back on the North Fork, where prices are less stratospheric, Russ and Lynda Moran have a five-bedroom home and a 40-foot canopied trawler that they park at their deepwater dock on an inlet in Mattituck. “That’s the nice thing about being on the north side of the North Fork,” Mr. Moran said. “We’re exactly one mile from the Long Island Sound, but very protected from the Sound.”
When the couple, who also have a condo with a boat slip in Newport, R.I., were searching for a home five years ago, many of the docks in the smaller waterways were too shallow for their boat. “We looked at so many houses on the canals and creeks off the Peconic Bay,” Mr. Moran said. “But you just can’t get a large vessel through there, with some exceptions.” When they found the Mattituck home, “we grabbed it,” he said.
These days, with deepwater docks in such short supply, Mr. Moran advises boaters not to take anyone’s word for the water depth. “You really have to take a pole out by the dock, preferably at low tide,” he said, “and see how deep it really is.”