Boating, Fishing, and Travel Information for Essex, CT

There are several small-craft facilities at Essex. Depths alongside the town landing are about 6 feet. Several facilities provide berths and mooring, electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, water, ice, marine supplies, sewage pumpout, storage, and full repairs. The marina just north of the entrance to Middle Cove has an approach depth of 8 feet and an alongside depth of 11 feet.
Essex is home to the Connecticut River Museum and Essex Historic Waterfront. Steamboat Dock is located at the foot of Main Street on the Connecticut River.
Navigation:
Click the “Map View” button above to see a chart of this harbor.
Small craft should have no difficulty in following the river channel from Saybrook Point .
3 miles above the river entrance is a railroad bridge with bascule span, 19 feet. The bridge tender monitors VHF-FM channel 13; call sign KT-5414.
3.5 miles above the river entrance is the Raymond E. Baldwin (IS 95) Bridge, fixed highway, 81 feet.
Essex Cove is the area off the main river channel skirting the waterfront at Essex. A dredged channel, marked by private buoys, leads from the main channel through the cove, and thence rejoins the main channel to the northward. In 2007, the controlling depth was 5.5 feet in the buoyed channel.
A privately marked small-boat channel leads westward from the dredged buoyed channel in Essex Cove to a yacht basin in Middle Cove, northward of Thatchbed Island. In 2008, the small-boat channel had a reported midchannel controlling depth of 4½ feet to the marina at the north end of the cove. Another channel, on the north side of the village, leads to North Cove, home to the Brewer Dauntless Shipyard as well as Essex Boat Works and Essex Island Marina.