Mooring Field Etiquette

How common is it for boats to anchor inside mooring fields (not fringes) and also not watch for existing anchor lines when dropping hardware? Seems to be a veritable you know what show this week.

I got hit at night by one that did that in Great Harbour JVD...got to meet the drunk sea wench they left on the boat.

It happens, I have not noticed it recently but did have a interesting experience picking up a ball at Great dog. Arrived and dropped the sails to pull in and grab the furthest inside ball which was open. A monohull came around the corner from the NE going fast and decided he wanted the ball we were moving slowly toward because of snorkelers in the water. He blew in to try a downwind pickup and ace us out. I did a 180 to move to a outside open ball rather than fight about it. He blew past the ball he was trying for and got close to the rocks. He backed down hard and tried to pickup the ball 90 degrees to the wind and realized the pennant was missing. Now does a hard 180 around swimmers and races out to grab the outside ball we are approaching slowly into the wind. We are about 50 feet away when he does the max reverse 90 degrees to the wind pickup attempt. At this point we move to yet a third ball. He managed to finally get tied off to the second ball and seemed very pleased with himself! I was considering taking the dinghy over for a conversation but it was a nice day so let it go.
G

It happened to us a couple of years ago in Great Harbour during the Regatta. They all came in and anchored throughout the mooring field. When we dropped our mooring ball, they started yelling at me about fouling their anchors. I was on a 58-ft Cat and could have dragged 6 of them to Tortola.

It happened to me at Cane Garden Bay. A Tradewinds 57 ft crewed boat anchored in middle of mooring field . I was at grocery store and returned to our boat with my wife tending to fenders... Wind had changed and backwinded the anchorage. Only then did I realize the offender was anchored. When I asked why they anchored in the middle of mooring field, the mate responded that they were "too big for mooring ball"... So WTF do you anchor in the middle of the mooring field?

Video the offender and then discuss. Video comes in handy when damage occurs. (Fortunately the offender pulled anchor and moved)

Nice form George! Let Karma deal with these folks!

Karma is fine until there is damage. We had to have a few discussions about anchor placement yesterday. Should be relatively straightforward to determine where an anchor might be looking at field depth. Guessing that not many folks have experience in this area.

There is another rule sometimes ignored. If there is a anchoring or mooring issue the last boat in is required to be the first boat out. This applies even on a Mooring if you interfere with another moored boat. The only BVI anchorage where this can be a issue is Cooper.

Not etiquette, but in the St. John NPS you must anchor 500 feet away from any moorings. We assume backing winds will come at night and give at least double our road length in space around us. Cooper is a ridiculous anchor, like anchoring on concrete. We anchor at Salt Island and dinghy over, if we must.

Cheers, RickG

I don't think they want you anchoring at Cooper (Manchioneel) anyway to preserve the sea grass for the turtle population. There also isn't much space inside the field to anchor and outside the field its quite deep, although larger boats do anchor out there. We've anchored around the corner at Haulover or the next Bay over, but its pretty rocky and hard to find good sand.