Privacy

What We Collect, and What We Don't

Written to be read rather than to be scrolled past. If anything here is unclear, ask us.

Last updated July 2026

The short version

  • We use Google Analytics to count visits. That's the only tracking on the site.
  • The chat widget sends what you type to Anthropic's Claude API. Nothing else does.
  • If you subscribe or use the contact form, we get your email address. We never sell it.
  • We run no display ads and no advertising trackers.
  • Affiliate links may set a cookie from the merchant — Viator, Booking.com, Amazon — when you click them.
  • Live weather and tide data comes from third-party services, which see your browser's request.
  • If you use "Ask the guide", what you type is sent to our server and on to Anthropic. Don't type anything private into it.
  • Want your data gone? Email us and it's gone.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand which pages people read and roughly where they come from. This sets cookies and shares data with Google. We look at it in aggregate — page views, referrers, whether the surfing page is more useful than the fishing one. We do not attempt to identify individual visitors and we have no interest in doing so.

If you'd rather not be counted, browser-level tracking protection, an ad blocker, or Google's own opt-out add-on will all handle it. Nothing on this site breaks if you block analytics.

The newsletter and the contact form

Both are handled by Web3Forms, which passes the submission to our inbox. When you use them we receive whatever you typed — for the newsletter, that's your email address; for the contact form, your name, email and message.

  • We never sell or rent your email address. Not to anyone, for any amount.
  • The newsletter goes out roughly monthly and every issue has an unsubscribe link.
  • Contact form messages are read and then kept only as long as they're useful.

Affiliate links

Some links here are affiliate links — principally to Viator for tours and charters, Booking.com for lodging, and Amazon for gear. If you click one and then book or buy, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Clicking an affiliate link typically sets a cookie belonging to that merchant, not to us, so they can attribute the sale. What they do with it is governed by their privacy policy, not ours. We don't receive personal information about what you bought — only that a booking happened.

Affiliate relationships never influence what we recommend. See how we make money.

Live conditions data

Several pages show live water temperature, wind, air temperature and tide times. Your browser fetches these directly from:

  • OpenWeatherMap — air temperature and wind
  • NOAA — tide predictions and buoy water temperature

Buoy water temperature is fetched by our own server rather than your browser, so NOAA does not see your request for that one.

Because your browser makes those requests, those services see your IP address, exactly as they would if you visited their own sites. We don't pass them anything about you.

"Ask the guide"

The chat widget in the corner of every page is powered by Anthropic's Claude API. When you send it a message, that message — plus the last few turns of your conversation, so it can follow the thread — is posted to our server, which forwards it to Anthropic and returns the reply.

  • Your IP address is recorded briefly, for rate limiting. It is discarded within the hour.
  • We do not store your conversation. It lives in your browser tab and disappears when you close it.
  • Anthropic's handling of the messages is governed by their terms, not ours.
  • Don't type anything into it you wouldn't put on a postcard. It's a guide to a beach town, not a confidential channel.

The widget loads no third-party scripts and sets no cookies. If you never open it, nothing is sent anywhere.

Advertising

We sell advertising to local Montauk businesses. Those placements are static, labelled, and carry no tracking of any kind — an advertiser gets a position on a page, not information about who saw it beyond an aggregate count.

There are no display ad networks on this site, no retargeting pixels, and no social media trackers.

Cookies, in total

  • Google Analytics cookies, set on every page.
  • Merchant cookies, set only if you click an affiliate link, and set by the merchant.

That is the complete list. We set nothing else. The chat widget sets no cookies.

Your rights

Wherever you live, we'll do the same thing: if you ask us what we hold about you, we'll tell you, and if you ask us to delete it, we'll delete it. If you're in the EU, the UK, or California, you have specific statutory rights to access, correction, deletion, and to object to processing — and we intend to honour them without making you cite a regulation.

Email us via the contact page.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and we don't knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has sent us their email address, tell us and we'll remove it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we'll update the date at the top and say what changed. We won't quietly broaden it.

A note on this document

This policy is written in plain English rather than in the language of a legal instrument, and it has not been reviewed by a lawyer. It describes accurately what this website does. If you need a compliance-grade document — for GDPR, CCPA or anything else — this is a starting point for your counsel to work from, not a substitute for one.