A note on Coral Bay, there is a lot of work being done to clean the bay up. Coral Bay is as far from government services as you can get and is nearly self-governing. The Coral Bay Community Council actively pursues grants for cleanups that the USVI government will not or cannot do. One grant that is in-progress is the removal of derelict vessels left by hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Dorian. DPNR was slow to help and the USVI government actually swept the gross receipts tax off the top of payments to companies that did the salvage. Another grant will provide for additional dinghy docks in Coral Harbor. Another grant helps pay for dumpsters for volunteer cleanup. All of the non-boat underwater debris left from hurricanes that has been cleaned up solely by volunteers. The Coral Bay Yacht Club has been very active on all of these activities.

Coral Harbor is a mangrove lagoon and is naturally nutrient rich. You can normally see the bottom in 25 feet in the outer anchorage, to port of the first red channel marker; by the way those channel markers are set by the community. This is the best place for visitors to anchor. Why does Coral Harbor get murky? Runoff from all of those villas on the hills that were built in the last 20 years. We badly need storm water management.

This past winter we saw more visiting boats in a day than we used to see in a week. We had unbriefed newbies trying to anchor in a tight mooring field without knowledge of how to operate their windlass, visitors running out of dinghy fuel, mechanical issues, the kinds of thing that can happen away from the charter base. Lacking chase boats to come out to Coral Bay, the local cruisers and liveaboards provided aid and direction. Many of those points have been gathered in a Coral Bay Cruisers' Guide that will be published when the new Coral Bay Yacht Club site launches; I'll post the link when it goes up.

So, welcome to Coral Bay. It is a WORK in progress. Say hi to us on Echoes, we'll be back after hurricane season.

Cheers, RickG