Caribbean Moorings

[geem]

We are sat at anchor in Portsmouth, Dominica. We have been here a week. We see yachts come and go and we are surprised how many yachts of all nationalities pick up a mooring and pay money to the boat boys for the privilege.
Why do people do this? As a visiting yacht you know nothing of the quality of the mooring you are paying good money for. There is lots of space to anchor so why risk your yacht to a mooring?
What are the insurance implications of picking up a dodgy mooring where the mooring owner has no insurance and takes no responsibility for the damage that may be caused by your boat or to your boat should it end up on the rocks or hitting another yacht?
Last night a very nice 50 odd foot Oyster on a mooring behind us let go and hit a large Catana. There was nobody on the Oyster. A local power boat and two guys off a French yacht managed to get the anchor down on the Oyster before it hit the rocks.
I don't understand how somebody with a yacht worth several hundred thousand pounds is willing to put it at risk in this way. I inspected the mooring after the event and it was all bits of knotted rope.
Do people have so little faith in their ability to use their own ground tackle that they would rather trust their luck to knotted ropes?
We have seen some truly awful attempts at anchoring whilst we have been here. Generally these are poor positioning when the boat drops the anchor such that it end up 3 m from another anchored boat or the anchoring boat lets so little scope out that it drags across the bay in the first puff of wind.

 

[tcm]

all agreed ... but you are maybe preaching to the converted though here, on a forum? If practical experience could leave you dead, best read ahead instead.

 

[prv]

Do people have so little faith in their ability to use their own ground tackle that they would rather trust their luck to knotted ropes?

Little faith, yes. That and it probably doesn't occur to them to wonder what's under the buoy.

Pete

 

[TQA]

This a common sight on many mooring buoys. Down below is a lump of concrete with a bit of rusting rebar forming the link and some rusting chain discarded by a cruiser and recycled by a local entrepreneur.

Pic in next post!

Cruisers mostly anchor and if forced to use a mooring apply a good tug in reverse to check it.

 

[TQA]

View attachment 56649

Union Island Grenadines

 

[OldBawley]

Same here in the Saronic / Peleponese mooring fields.

What I find bizarre also is that a hose with a tap connected to it means for almost anyone that the water is OK. Have seen people fill their tanks from a hose ( with a tap ) connected to an open tank containing “water” but also dead pigeons. They had to pay the Italian ormeggio to take water so it had to be good !
In an other case I surprised a wild hog taking a bath in a dammed off brook which was connected to a hose with tap. Hose was at least 400 yards, nobody cared to have a look where the water was coming from. Installed by the owner of a private island in the Göcek bays, that guy had two water carrying boats working every day to keep his island green.
Seen loads of yachts taken water there. That hog was not the only animal using the pond.

Must be something embedded. See a buoy, grab it. See a tap, use it.

 

[Jobs a good un]

Seem to recall the depths off Portsmouth are quite deep for anchoring , maybe that why ?

 

[Trident]

Its all down to fear of anchoring - people don't trust their tackle and don't know how to do it. We watched in Ibiza last summer as a teenage boy dove down to attach ropes to the old concrete blocks that had recently had official buoys cut off because they were being replaced with new ones. Several people paid him what looked like €10 a time to take a rope off their bow and swim down 3 metres, loop it through a dodgy rusty bit of iron hoop and bring it back up to them. A dutch man who did this that we spoke to later said he had tried to anchor twice and dragged so though this was a good deal. It never once occurred to him that the mooring might be unsafe and that a 15 year old lad might not be the best judge of if a 45 foot yacht was securely held - but then he admitted he had no real idea how to anchor because it wasn't done on his sailing courses...

 

[OldBawley]

It must be fear.

Sample : Today we had the wind SailaboutVic was talking about.
Not that bad, but the North quay of Poros is a bad place to be with wind that will turn West.
Some charterers had to leave the North quay because of the waves, one came anchoring behind me, a perfectly safe spot. Well done I thought.
Protected from the waves, wind howls but does no harm.
An hour later, the wind decreases a bit, and off they go. Anchor up and back to that dangerous quay.

Why?? Why ??
No food on the boat ? Fear ? Wanting to be near other people ? Seasick ? Advice from the flotilla leader ? Not trusting the anchor?

As long as the wind stays this way, the North quay will be very uncomfortable but what the heck, it´s not their boat.
If a thunderstorm develops, ( likely ) that North quay is a bad place to be. I have seen that floating pontoon curl like a snake in four feet waves. Took just two minutes from dead calm to hell.

 

[TQA]

Seem to recall the depths off Portsmouth are quite deep for anchoring , maybe that why ?

Portsmouth is fine. Lots of 20 ft sandy areas. Some coral rubble but a good tug in reverse tells you if you have a grip.

Roseau at the South end of Dominica is the problem anchorage. Small shallow shelf now filled with moorings. Off the shelf it is 100ft.

 

[geem]

Seem to recall the depths off Portsmouth are quite deep for anchoring , maybe that why ?

Portsmouth is a large shallow anchorage with lots of seagrass. The holding is good once you have set your anchor. Gusting 35 knots this morning. Very squally. Wind going from 5 kts to 30 on a regular basis. No draggers yet!

 

[Oscarpop]

I can see both sides of this coin.
We anchored there about a month ago. It was rammed full. Ended up lifting our keel and going into she shallows. So sometimes when the anchorage is full and Portsmouth does have a lot of wind shifts, a buoy is he best bet.

However the Chris Doyle book states that the pays buoys in Portsmouth are excellent.
We picked up a buoy as we went to look at one and the rope/sinker and they were some of the best we have seen.
Maybe the oyster assumed they were on a pays buoy ?

 

[BobnLesley]

We've always anchored there/everywhere, but the as noted, the PAYS buoys are pretty good. Our favourite was in Carriacou: The local buoy-guy (one of those two brothers) put a 50+' charter boat onto a buoy, collected his $20 and left, an hour or so later the wind picked-up to perhaps 10-15 knots and the yacht, complete with the mooring began drifting backwards. The crew eventually responded to the shouted warnings, dropped the buoy and to our amazement actually picked-up another. This second dragged slightly during the night too, though I don't think they ever noticed that? At about 09:00 the following morning, the Charterers were making ready to leave, just as the buoy guy arrived on his morning round and their animated conversation took place just abeam of us: In response to the Charterers' complaint about the undersized/unsafe buoy, far from offering any discount/refund or even apology, the buoy-guy was demanding that they pay another $50; twenty for using a second one of his buoys plus an further $30 for the cost of taking the first buoy back to it's original location, needless to say, he didn't get it paid.

 

[tcm]

all of the responses play to original post - the buoys "seem excellent" say some, or are fastidiously maintained and so on.

Point is, the buoys could be fab, but the most recent user mashed the thing with their prop. I saw this once in the BVI. So mostly I don't use buoys...,,

 

[geem]

I can see both sides of this coin.
We anchored there about a month ago. It was rammed full. Ended up lifting our keel and going into she shallows. So sometimes when the anchorage is full and Portsmouth does have a lot of wind shifts, a buoy is he best bet.

However the Chris Doyle book states that the pays buoys in Portsmouth are excellent.
We picked up a buoy as we went to look at one and the rope/sinker and they were some of the best we have seen.
Maybe the oyster assumed they were on a pays buoy ?

I dont see how this anchorage could ever be full. You could anchor all the way up to the customs dock and beyond. There is so much room. There are about 70 yachts here at the moment and you could anchor twice as many with ease.
On a slightly different note, friends here have been hit three times by French yachts in as many days. The first yacht hit them whilst anchoring then dragged onto them in the early hours. This morning another French yacht dragged onto them and accused them of dragging. Not sure how dragging up wind work!
Maybe the French yachts should be forced to take the PAYS moorings for the sake of everybody else...

 

[geem]

I can see both sides of this coin.
We anchored there about a month ago. It was rammed full. Ended up lifting our keel and going into she shallows. So sometimes when the anchorage is full and Portsmouth does have a lot of wind shifts, a buoy is he best bet.

However the Chris Doyle book states that the pays buoys in Portsmouth are excellent.
We picked up a buoy as we went to look at one and the rope/sinker and they were some of the best we have seen.
Maybe the oyster assumed they were on a pays buoy ?

I dont see how this anchorage could ever be full. You could anchor all the way up to the customs dock and beyond. There is so much room. There are about 70 yachts here at the moment and you could anchor twice as many with ease.
On a slightly different note, friends here have been hit three times by French yachts in as many days. The first yacht hit them whilst anchoring then dragged onto them in the early hours. This morning another French yacht dragged onto them and accused them of dragging. Not sure how dragging up wind work!
Maybe the French yachts should be forced to take the PAYS moorings for the sake of everybody else...