Marking a safe passage
BY PETER A. SUTTERS JR. INDEPENDENT WRITER

Photo by Peter Sutters Assistant Harbor Master Sheila Lucey drops a channelmarking buoy into Madaket Harbor last Thursday.

It was a busy week out of the office for assistant harbormaster Sheila Lucey and waterway coordinator Ken Lippin.

The two have been plying the waters of Madaket Harbor, setting out brand new channel-marking buoys that will guide boaters through the waters, which sometimes could be be as shallow as a foot outside the channel, from the docks of Jackson Point to the Atlantic Ocean. And thanks to a $19,000 grant from the state, the new solar-powered, lightemitting, diode buoys will make water travel at night even easier.

Visible from over a mile away, the buoys marking the ever-shifting channel are now in place after Lucey and Lippin spent last week dropping them into the water, guided by sonar depth equipment and global positioning systems.

"We're trying to find the best water to get people in and out of the harbor," explained Lucey. "Because of the new opening between Smith's Point and Esther's Island, the channel has moved to the north, so we had to map the bottom of the harbor and place the buoys to reflect that change."

Working with Lippin at the helm and Lucey attaching chains from the buoys to anchors, the duo - who seem to work in as many light-hearted verbal jabs at each other as buoys in the water - painstakingly position each marker in the best place, mixing the information they have on nautical charts with measurements from their on-board equipment and visual cues taken from different colored water.

On more than one occasion last Thursday, the readings form the nautical maps differed from what experience had taught the two. The newly placed buoys - officially called aids to navigation - will be marked with GPS once they are in place and will be detailed on nautical charts available at the Marine Department.