Fairfield Harbour, New Bern, NC
How deep is that water?
When I was looking for a waterside property one of the first things that sprung to mind was "I wonder what the depth is at the dock?", as you want to know if your boat can get to the dock.. a common question in North Carolina and the eastern inner waterways due to shallow rivers and estuaries leading to the ocean.
If you are lucky the property listing will show the depth at the dock, although I found more often that not, nothing is stated and you resort to a search for waterway charts, these too, often do not show a realistic depth adjacent to residential properties on these waterways. These areas are often within a chart contour line that you would not enter! A good example of that is where I eventually bought a house at Fairfield Harbour, yes harbor it is spelt the British way. Looking at charts you will see that the entrance of the harbor is listed at a measly 4 feet. I was not going to get my sailboat in there, even though I wanted a sailboat with a shoal keel.
Next problem I ran into was that there is very little local information available, in my instance I checked the local homeowners/property owners association, two local yacht club web sites, nothing to be found. I had some luck with a local marina, listing 8 - 12 feet of depth if I remember correctly. So, with this information to hand I headed to the marina to check!
I met a couple of very friendly boat owners who confirmed that there were not any issues getting in and out of the marina. Northwest Creek Marina is within the Fairfield Harbour community, according to Google Maps, but my target dock was within what is known as the "Inner harbor" accessed through Spring Creek, this is where the chart depth shows 4 feet depth onwards. I inquired to my new found friends as to the depth and was given the “Mmm, it gets shallow in there” response reinforced by a shaking head. It was time for a reconnaissance drive!
Online I had seen pictures of fairly large looking vessels in the inner harbor and had started to wonder if these were pictures from a bygone age, somewhat like those beautiful resort-like pictures we found in vacation and holiday brochures. Driving around there are some quite substantial looking sailing vessels, I stopped and chatted to a few folks that gave a very positive account of the inner harbor, and its depth. A recent dredging service visit cleared localized residential dockside sand, although paid for by individual homeowners.
So, what is the depth of that water at the dock? Well, my dock is towards the end of a canal or inlet that can accumulate sediment, and turned out to be ~5.5 feet at it’s shallowest point right next to the dock edge, I’d say on average, as the water does go up and down mainly driven by the winds in the river Neuse and Pamlico Sound, around 2-4 inches movement on a typical day. This does not leave much room under my 4.5 foot draft, but enough to get in and out, most of the time! On occasion the sailboat has been on the sand as strong winds can drop the water by 2-3 feet below normal. I have seen this happen twice in two years. So, generally speaking you are good with a shoal draft, and there are a few deep draft boats within the inner harbor, but please go to the dock and check!
Now for the rest of the docks in the harbor it depends, some folks have dredged and are happy with 6-12 feet of water, some not so happy and need to dredge!
Getting in and out of the harbor has never been an issue for me, as the inner harbor is deeper than Spring Creek, I think 12-16 feet in the sections I travel for the most part. Again the shallowest channel section is at the entrance to Spring Creek is normally in the range of 8-12 feet, the channel is well marked.
Hope this information is useful, i certainly could have done with it what I was buying in the area and feel free to reach out if you have questions or find the above inaccurate!
