Cruising Vineyard Sound: Lake Tashmoo, Vineyard Haven, Marthas Vineyard Massachusetts

Lake Tashmoo, Martha's Vineyard

Lake Tashmoo is a quiet anchorage within walking distance of Vineyard Haven.
It is the best of all the cruising harbors.
The sandbar at the entrance is shallow enough to keep most boats on alert as they enter.
Once in the harbor there is plenty of water, and a peaceful anchorage.
Geese, ducks and swans abound, and half of every loaf of bread on-board goes to the wildlife.
This is a very sheltered harbor, and only exposed from the north and south.

Kayaks share the water with classic wooden boats of bristol quality and Lobster boats headed out
to work their traps daily. This is a cruising and working harbor, and in many ways appears to be of a time past.

Boathouse at the southernmost corner of the harbor

Lake Tashmoo is a 270-acre coastal pond on the north shore of Martha's Vineyard. Fresh water enters the pond via groundwater and springs at its head. In the late 1800s those springs became the source for commercially bottled water and for the Town’s first public water supply system. A meandering inlet connected the lake to Vineyard Sound and was an actively fished herring run. After the Great Gale of 1938, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the inlet and constructed jetties that created the current estuary and stabilized the opening for navigation. "Tisbury Waterways"