You all are very correct about Cooper.

About 35 yrs ago, Cooper had no moorings. I was instructing for a sailing in club in Newport Beach Ca. I also ordered the Cruising Guide well ahead of time, and learned about the sea grass and the depth, and anchors dragging at Cooper..

This was my first sailing vacation in the BVI. In fact our sailing club's very first international bare boat charter experience. Myself and our sailing club secretary and one of our members was the crew on our Moorings Beneteau 32. We had 125 ft, total chain and rode and a small anchor.

The owner of the sailing club had stopped at Cooper and made some kind of a deal with the owner of the restaurant to have a party and bbq for our fleet. I think it was 12 boats. Well, I was not going to anchor there for obvious reasons.
Grass, depth, short on rode, and not recommended.

That night, with 10 of the fleets boats anchored in Cooper, guess whose anchor drug and had an encounter with one of our other sailing club boats. Yep, the owner of our club. Lots of screaming and blaming and quite a ruction in the wee hours of the morning.

We were safe and sound at another island. Erica was skipper of of a 42 foot mono hull, and also decided not to anchor at Cooper.

For not being there, and Erica following me, The owner of the sailing club was going to fire me. When we joined up the next day or two, I told him the reasons that I made the decision not to anchor at cooper. He told me that I should have taken the boat back and demanded more chain and rode. No clue as to the grassy bottom and cruising guide information. I think what occurred is that he got a rebate, on each person for the bbq . Yep, he lost out on a total extra commission of 9 people. After we returned to socal, never heard another thing about it. All was well for another 20 plus or so years, .

To this day, we just flat do not anchor at Cooper Island. We do our best to get to Cooper early for a mooring.

Denny and Erica