On the BVI mariner site, under Cooper Island, it says there are 10 private moorings (BUT AVAILABLE FOR USE). Can someone explain what exactly the rules are for that??
It's been a couple of years, but it's my recollection that while the majority of the balls are owned, and rent collected, by CIBC, the 10 closest to Cistern Point are owned, and rent collected by, someone else. All are available for transients. The balls closest to Cistern Point are nice because you can easily snorkle to point right from your boat.
Aarpskier is correct about the balls near Cistern Point. They don't seem to be maintained quite as well as CIBC balls, so be sure to check them for holding.
And since he brought up snorkeling at Cistern Point, we had a somewhat scary experience there last May. We'd snorkeled there several times in the past from our moored boat and had no problem. But in May we did the same, and found the current overwhelmed our swimming ability. It was easy to snorkel around shore out to the point (way too easy I should have realized); when we tried to turn around and go back there was no way we could fight the current.
Fortunately there was a boat moored to the one dive ball at the very end of the point. We swam (let the current take us) to that boat and they were nice enough to motor us back to our boat.
Lesson learned...pay attention to the current even when snorkeling!
