TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Cooper Island - to Boaty ball or not to Boaty ball?

We’re heading out on our charter tomorrow and I’m wondering, do we really need to get up at the crack of dawn and try to get a Boaty ball? I assume Cooper has other non-Boaty balls? What about the other islands? Thanks!

Don't bother.

4 weeks in May/June. Never had an issue finding a FCFS. At this end of the season its not an issue and as soon as BEYC and Saba come back next season I suspect BB will stop being an issue or something of use to anybody, ever...and (we can only hope) will disappear.

Most nights all the BB/Children's balls were taken but there were First Come First Serve Balls open all night. That includes Cooper on two occasions where FCFS were open all night.

Cooper seems to be the main issue at the moment...everywhere else plenty of balls and plenty of anchoring options. My advice would be don't bother with BB, but if you want to be safe, don't aim to arrive late in the day to Cooper.

Norman - all FCFS in June and plenty of them!
Marina Cay / Trellis - all FCFS and plenty of them and good anchoring anyway at MC.
North sound - Anchor off Sand Box! Save some bucks! It's a beautiful spot, great holding and easy RIB to Leverick. Or otherwise FCFS Leverick.
Anegada - plenty of FCFS and great backup of anchor at Pomato Point, great holding, beautiful spot and Fab restaurant on the Beach (Sid's Place).
JVD - Diamond Cay - FCFS, Great harbour FCFS. All good. No need for BB

All this info accurate as at end June this year. I'm sure others will correct me if things have changed.

Oh...and have an amazing time!!! Cant see anything horrible brewing in the Atlantic as at today's most recent satellite pics so hopefully you will have awesome weather for the duration too! Enjoy!

I agree completely with Christo. We are heading to jost right now. We will try white Bay, otherwise our second choice is great harbour, followed by diamond Cay and lastly little harbor. I don't have a boatyball reservation. No need. Dumb concept. The money you save will buy you a drink.

By the way, we just left cane garden Bay. A few fcfs balls were still available.

If you head to Cooper tomorrow, try to arrive before noon and enjoy that beautiful place.

Like Warren and Christo said, I think it depends a lot on what you want to do tomorrow and when you want to get to Cooper. I don’t know about their traffic at the moment, but a month ago when I was there they were full, and most of the BoatyBalls are still booked each day (all 15 were booked today). If you’re fine getting there around noon then you’ll probably be okay with a FCFS but if you want to arrive later you may want to look at getting a BB. With the off season approaching though it might not be as big of a deal.

FYI to the OP - Alec Atteberry (although he sometimes claims that he doesn't) does in fact work for Boatyball - so maybe take what he says with a pinch of salt! He likes to sometimes represent the brand...and sometimes just post as a civilian, like the above post.

Some of us on the forum perhaps see this kind of dishonesty as a clue to what lies behind the 'Boatyball' brand and makes us dislike the completely flawed concept even more!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a college student that works for BoatyBall in my free time; no pretenses about that. However I believe my response was a pretty fair analysis based off of my experience.

BoatyBall was created to allow boaters to spend more time on the water, and easily pay for maintained and insured moorings. So far it’s allowed thousands boaters to do just that.

Previously BB said on this forum when asked about the insurance that BB was just the collection mechanism and that the mooring balls were privately owned and if one did break loose BB was not responsible.

To clarify, the moorings in the BB program are maintained and insured by Moore Seacure, not BoatyBall.

The problem is that if you do not win in the boatyball lottery at Cooper you now must get there even sooner to have a chance at a ball. We always arrived early at Cooper because we enjoy spending the day there and it’s one of my granddaughters favorite spots. Prior to boatyball I could always get a prime ball where I wanted it. Boatyball took all the prime balls. Last time there we had a crappy ball and watched the boatyballs sitting empty almost all day when we could have enjoyed those balls in the past. It appears you have tried to cherry pick the prime balls to convert. Leave us some good balls please!!!
P.S. Tried to stop in midweek to swap tanks at 2 pm. Never a problem in the past. All FCFS balls taken. Only open balls were boatyballs. SailCarribbean lost a chunk of revenue and we did not get our planned morning dive it.

Moore Secure’s FCFS balls are also insured.

Agreed

But boatyball has alway made it sound as If their balls were the only maintained and insured balls. Boaty balls also claims credibility by listing entities as partners. Some of them dont acknowkedge any relationship with boaty ball. Certainly not partners.

BoatyBall has never claimed that other Moore Seacure moorings, including FCFS, aren’t maintained and insured. What BoatyBall has done, is make it easy for mooring ball owners who have paid for this maintenance/insurance, to promote the fact that their moorings are maintained and insured.

All of the partners listed on BB’s page have previously requested to be added. We will be updating the page with additional partners soon.

I spoke to 2 partners. At least one said they had nothing to do with boaty ball. But they did not care that BB provided a link to their page.

BB has very strongly Implied that you should use their ball because of the insurance and maintenance. They suggest that no one else has insured or maintained balls. They have not distinguished between Moore Secure or others.

Maybe someone else can chime in here

Warren I’d be happy to discuss the ins and outs of BoatyBall, the BVI, and anything else you’d like to talk about in a private message. For now I think we’ve thoroughly derailed this thread and strayed from the original topic. Cheers

Chisto,

I sort of agree with Alex, he says we are derailing the thread.

How about they remove Boatyball from the BVI as they are derailing a lot of ttol threads.

By the way, I reached out to boaty ball and offered to have a telephone conversation to discuss my strong objections to boatyball.

They refuse to talk with me. They don’t seem to care about who they might inadvertently harm.

So, I am done with the private messages re BB.

Alec, We can pm on any other topic but boatyball discussions stay in the open for all eyes to see.

...everytime the ridiculous name 'Boatyball' is mentioned, the thread becomes derailed. Because 'Boatyball' is a trainwreck of a s### idea....

Just for another perspective, we were there in late June, and we did grab a boatyball at Cooper. It was a pretty easy process, though maybe I was just lucky to get one that day. Either way, I was glad I did, as the field was full by early afternoon.

We didn't bother with bb for any of our other stops, and didn't have any trouble finding balls, though we tended to arrive pretty early in the day and were obviously in the low season.

Not trying to step on toes or discount some folks' strong feelings about this, but just adding an average joe's opinion, that it worked fine for me.

Since it isn't going to go away, maybe they can add in a location feature so you could pull up the app when you arrived like you did and it would give you the OK to grab a specific ball since the boat that reserved it is a long way away or something. Only complicates the process and wouldn't be perfect, but there should be some way to get a ball to get tanks filled.