Right now if you want a ball reserved at Cooper in the high season you have to pay 432.00 on top of the ball fee or book your boat through boatyball and pay a 15% commission. At what point would you say it doesn’t work? They will raise that rate when they start selling out. Would 1000.00 be to much for a night on a ball? Is it fair if you're on a boat that doesn’t have fast WiFi that you're excluded? Maritime rules on anchoring have always been first in last out. You also had the option of free day use for the balls. With boatyball that goes away. On our last trip we managed to get a FCFS ball when a day tripper left. We needed to swap out tanks. Once that was done we debated staying the night at Cooper. In the past we would have stayed for happy hour and dinner but not with their support of boatyball. There was a large cat with a bunch of kids onboard circling looking for a ball. We decided to go somewhere quiet and anchor so I called them on the VHF and told them we would be leaving. Would it have been acceptable for me to demand 432.00 for the ball or we would stay on it for the night?
One last critical point. The boatyball money goes straight to the US. It does not stay in or support anyone in the BVI.
My two cents -
I was able to secure a ball without wi-fi from Anagada and Great Harbour. It was nice to be able to take our time on long passages, or multi-stop passages and be able to arrive in our preferred anchorage. The hope is that more FCFS balls appear in popular anchorages to even out the concern of a short stop over vs the luxury of a reserved ball. I spoke with a BB representative before our trip who echoed the same. Here's an excerpt from our conversation
"When we initially started BoatyBall, we approached certain bays and resorts with the idea of making the FCFS moorings payable with an online program and eventually, perhaps, reservable in the
future. We did not realize that the bay owners would rather have the reservable feature. Almost every bay we talked to wanted all of their moorings in the reservable program. We thought it best
if we just ran a pilot program with a limited number of moorings to see how the program unfolded.
We quickly realized that to balance the system out, more FCFS moorings were needed."
I did not do the advanced reservation service, which sounds exorbitant considering the return. Each reservation was $40, $10 of which was the service charge for BB.
