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It's my understanding that any beach in the bay has public access up to the high tide line. Can anyone point me to a document that shows this in writing??? I have seen a few no trespassing signs on beaches in the bay. I just want to dinghy in and swim legally without being shot at by the land owner.
Access rights will vary from state to state. A quick Google search suggests that In Delaware the public access will vary between the high water line and the low water line according to the property deed. In Virginia public access is restricted to the mean low water line. Maryland allows access below the high water line.
How would you feel about a drunken beach party in your front yard? I can understand how many owners get that way. Even the nicest ones get tired of it.
I try really hard not to push it. What is the OP looking to do on the beach? Dog walking is rude. Using the beach to cut-across to a road is trepassing. I look for clearly public sites as often as I can, since there isn't much you can do below the real beach, which is most often private. Swimming should be fine.
Joe, some of that information is not quite correct on that site. Maryland, in particular, has a riparian rights clause for certain things, which allows the property owner to restrict certain activities and limits them to the strict use of the property owner. While much of this has to do with fishing, hunting and pier construction, there were other items that included the installation of mooring balls and mooring anchors. Lots of small print that most folks never take the time to read, and the only reason I know anything at all about this is because I attended some of the hearings in Annapolis that pertained to this subject. Take a look at Riparian Rights Defined
The basic rule is that the homeowner does not own the water or the land under the water. His ownership ends at the HIGH WATER mark. So if you are allowed to anchor you are allowed to swim. You can also use a dinghy and land the dinghy on the beach, but you (and the dinghy) must stay below the high water line.
Note that some property owners may try to bully you, but the law is on your side. For example, a few years ago my family (wife, 2 daughters, 1 son) and I tried to take part in a Father's day race. There was no wind, so we abandoned the race and motored close to shore where we anchored about 50 yards off the beach (this is the Long Island Sound, near Rocky Point). There was a private mooring near us, buy we were not on the mooring, only moored near it. Anyway, it was a nice day so we jumped in the water and swam around. My daughter and I swam to the beach and walked around (being careful to stay below the tide line). The property owner came out and told me that the beach was private and that I wasn't allowed to be there. I calmly told him that "yes the beach is private, but I was allowed to be there, as long as I stayed below the tide line, which I clearly was." He then understood that I knew the law and he walked away. After being there for an hour or so, a nice breeze sprung up so we upped anchor and sailed away. No one was any worse off and we all enjoyed the day.
I think you will find that the basic rule is that the property owner owns whatever his chain of title conveyed to him in his deed.
I know of private property owners who own bay bottom in the Florida keys, and I would guess that you can find similar situations in many states.
I think the web site suggested that there wasn't a simple answer for Maryland. You do make a good point about web sites being out of date or misinformed. Caveat emptor or something like that.
I always just keep one foot wet. I'm below the high tide mark and it's pretty darn hard to prove were the low tide mark is.
I just ran across some great youtube videos about this type of stuff. Including kayakers being chased around by clowns in motorboats because they are fishing to close to private docks...lol
There is an Island near Stonington, CT called Sandy Point. Somehow some well meaning environmental group got permission to start charging a "landing fee" that is to go towards conservation and clean up. OK, OK whatever side of the equation I'm on, I'm not giving some yahoo cash because he walks up and asks for it. So if they come around I just go stand in the water up to my ankles.
This reminds of something I experienced years ago. I went to a beach in Florida and saw a couple heavy wooden lounge chairs, more or less permanent fixtures due to their weight. Figuring they had been put there by a nearby hotel or condo, my friend and I sat on them for our stay on the beach. After a while a guy came up and said, "Excuse me, did you pay to sit on these chairs?" I said no. He said, "Good, they're mine and you're welcome to use them, but some dude has been walking around trying to charge people for them."
Anyway, that friendly encounter aside, I think a lot of these beach disputes arise from property owners who make faulty assumptions about what their rights are. A friendly "Don't mean to intrude, but here's what the law says, we won't be here long" might do the trick.
Also, as with a lot of these discussions, I have no trouble seeing the worst case scenario: somebody pulls up his Tom Sawyer raft within twenty feet of your property and sets up a semi-permanent camp with laundry lines, open trash pile, and generator-powered tv blaring "The Price is Right." It's no different than the risk of sharing a property line with someone (what are they going to put in their yard?) but the barriers to access are so much lower at the waterline.
pdq-
Your map is incorrect. Look at NY and Long Island. They show the public owns the underwater lands, and that's very much wrong. Some of the bottomlands off Long Island were privately assigned by Royal Patent to landowners before there was a New York State or a United States, and those rights are still respected in modern law.
In other areas, the federal government owned those bottom rights, and during WW2 they were sold off, usually to local towns and villages, to raise money for Liberty Bonds. I'm told that both Oyster Bay and the Town of Southampton have large holdings to bottom lands that way, which is one way they can say "no shellfishing" etc. to anyone who isn't a resident.
And New York wasn't the only place this happened.
When in doubt...make Real Damn Sure by finding the actual state laws in wherever you are, because there is NOTHING uniform or guaranteed about them. Except perhaps your right of passage through the navigable waters.
Try anchoring anything, even a rowboat, within a thousand feet of any New York State beach with a swimming area. (Possibly county beaches too, IIRC.) You'll be asked for your autograph on the citation. Little things like that, can complicate life everywhere.
Yup, LOTS of exceptions. That map was lifted from a site listed earlier in the thread, and I could list many dozens of corrections within the Chesapeake Bay and nearby waters.
Ironically, the drunken beach party sites in my area of Chesapeake Bay are at locations recently established by the state and feds - dredge spoil islands created by dredging the Havre de Grace, MD channel. On any given day during the summer, 50 to 200 boats can be seen anchored next to these islands, the the parties often last well into the night, and sometimes overnight - but no one in Havre de Grace cares because they are well away from any human habitation. From the islands to town, it's a 5 mile run up the channel.
Bubs, the islands are all sand, fairly clean looking, and very, very popular from Memorial Day till early October. One island tends to be for the adult drunks, while the larger island tends to lend itself to families with kids.
There's a sinking island in the Rhode called Flat Island, next to the sunken High Island. We nicknamed it "Dog Poop Island" because the stinkpotters swarm the island in the summer and let their dogs run amok to do their business.
They should just go ahead and rename the Rhode river Dummkopf Alley and post signs saying "anchor at risk of your peace of mind", with a sign showing a tipping champagne glass to show sailboats it's no place to considering going.
My own thoughts are if these are "private" beaches then the owners should not expect the public to subsidize their private beach by providing Fed. Flood Ins. or state/ county/ federal catastrophe help when their beach washes out.
Flood insurance is not cheap, it really doesn't cover washed out beach fronts, and the average cost is about $700 per year, but much higher in areas more prone to flooding. In Chesapeake Bay, most beachfront homes are situated well above the high tide line, often on hills overlooking the rivers and bay, and they're rarely prone to flooding at all. Additionally, many waterfront home owners spend enormous sums shoring up the beach with jetties and rip-rap, which is very expensive, and prevents shoreline erosion, but they are not reimbursed in any form for this. I would no more invade their beach privacy than I would allow them to tie up their boat to mine without permission.
During peak summer weekends, it can be overrun with power boaters. Other times , it's great.
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