TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands I hate boaty ball.

We left Anegada at 9,undecided about our next stop being Cooper or Peter or Norman. 

There is no reason that we should be forced to decide on a destination before 7am. Many factors will impact our choice. Such factors include wind and sea conditions.

We arrived at Cooper at noon.  Not one fcfs ball available. 

We only wanted to stop for lunch on board. Over a dozen bb unoccupied. We moved on. We did not want to borrow a bb. if the people arrive with the mooring reservation they would be stressed. No good reason to cause them stress.

Why should we be forced by boatyball to use boaty ball or avoid Cooper? 
The old fcfs system was fine.

There are not enough fcfs balls at Cooper.

It is the same situation at great harbour on Jost. That place is almost entirely boatyball.

A few days ago, We needed to clear back into the bvi. There was only 1 fcfs ball available. Lots of empty BB.

BB is out of control.

They are owned and controlled by foreigners. The come down here to establish relationships. That is working and I understand that they don't have permits.

I can wait for the day that they add pushed out of the BVI.

I agree 100%. Based on our experience this week, I think the only way to ensure a ball at Cooper is to pay Boatyball the $400 advance fee. If you do that, you can reserve the day before. Otherwise it’s try to snag one at 6:59:59. We were able to do so exactly once. We got a fcfs ball at Cooper but only because we arrived early. BB has most of the balls at Cooper and we watched many boats all day leaving in frustration, while the BB moorings stayed open.

I think BB would work if they only had 25% of available moorings. That way people who really want to reserve in advance could pony up the $400 fee. Everyone else could continue to use the 75% of moorings that are fcfs. Right now, BB’s disproportionate share of available balls leads to a crappy experience for everyone.

And gives them the power to behave outside of the best interests of the bvi and it’s visitors

I visit the VIs 5-6 times a year, typically with a crew of 8. Cooper Island was a regular lunch time stop for us - nice microbrew beer, rum bar, and boutique - and no problems finding a FCFS mooring ball midday. Since BB came along and the subsequent lack of FCFS moorings midday, they have been unfortunately OFF my itinerary since early last year.

Great Harbour, JVD has also been my regular stop for clearance from/to USVI (along with visits to the several beachfront restaurants). I've also noticed the declining number of FCFS balls and I will likely bypass Great Harbour and return to clearing-in/out at Soper's Hole with its many more FCFS balls, particularly as their rebuilding continues,

We used to stop at Cooper all the time around noon. Drop the tanks to be filled and head to the club for lunch. Wife always spent money in the Boutique. Can’t plan on that anymore. Have moved on to other options.

I know this doesn't solve any BB problems, but is it possible to anchor overnight in Haullovers Bay? Dink around the point to the club, or bad idea?

Cooper & Great Harbour JVD are on my personal redlined list...neither are worth it given all the other things you can do with far less hassle and better service. If I want hassle and bad service I can just go into Washington DC any day

If you want to make a difference go to Trip Advisor and rate Cooper accordingly and mention boatyball as someone just did. At some point maybe Cooper will wake up...

You could anchor at haulovers. The dining at the restaurant at cooper in my view is not the destination. The location is stunning and they have a decent happy hour.

If I was at haulovers, I would stay put.

Are boatyballs in every anchorage now? We haven't sailed there since May 2018, so not sure what to expect.

I do not wish to reserve a boatyball in advance or be subjected to sailing into an anchorage, only to find all FCFS moorings unavailable in the most popular anchorages given the limited number of FCFS, hence I will forget about Cooper. I typically enjoy the following anchorages:

1. Anegada
2. Deadmans Bay, PI
3. Somewhere in North Sound, usually Leverick one night and then on to Saba
4. Kelly Cove, Norman Island
5. Diamond Cay, JVD
6. White Bay - usually dinghy from Great Harbour, JVD


On the other hand, we could simply avoid the BVIs and move on to the USVI and SVI, sounds less stressful.

1. Anegada has lots of fcfs balls.
2. No bb.
3. Leverick many bb. Nowhere else in north sound open yet. Saba, please hurray.
4. All of Norman, bb free, bb has not spread there.
5. Thank goodness no bb.
6. White bay is bbfree. Great harbour has almost no fcfs. So stay away from gh

100% agreed. Very limiting. Cooper is almost inaccessible now (having said that I did snag an FCFS ball last week, but only because I dodged into the bay to avoid a squall and that was at 11am) forget about getting a boatyball... all gone immediately at 7am. There is ABSOLUTLEY NO WAY I will pay $400+ for the pleasure of getting an advanced booking, quite apart from anything else I only went to boatyball mooring fields twice in the 7 nights I was sailing and I am not spending 240$ a night for a 30$ ball!

The management at Cooper Island in particular must realize that their lunchtime business is taking a hit??

It must be the same with great harbour on JVD.

They haven't taken over Gt Harbour on Peter yet Warren... I think you mean Great Harbour on Jost?

Yes BB has got to go it's a real problem and even worse this visit. I dont understand how people are not complaining to tourisum.

Please consider sharing your views re boatyball with members of the bvi ministry of tourism.

Their email addresses are:

Hazel Penn hpenn@bvitourism.com
Perla George pgeorge@bvitourism.com
Carolyn Blackett cblackett@bvitourism.com
Keith Dawson kdawson@bvitourism.com

If enough people write, perhaps they will take action before boaty ball ruins the bvi.

Corrected

Warren--I understand that you hate BB. I get that. Thank you for editing the post to take out the reference to cancer.

Thank you for the update Warren.

I decided to look at the boatyball website to determine where boatyballs are located. Unfortunately I cannot browse their website without providing an email address. I do not wish to sign up or provide an email address. Would someone be able to tell me what anchorages boatyballs are located?

It would also be nice to know how many boatyballs are in each anchorage versus total FCFS balls are available in the same anchorage. That may help sailors determine in advance if they wish to test their luck at finding an available FCFS mooring.

Always a place to moor in the USVI. As I come more and more, I am more and more happy not going to the BVI. Sure, we incorporate it into some trips, but others it’s all USVI.

Or go during the “off” season.

We encountered BB at:
Great Harbor JVD
Leverick
Cooper
Cane Garden Bay

And they are in a few other spots as well.

We chartered back in 2016 and had to arrive at Cooper by noon in order to secure a FCFS ball for an evening stay. This was waaaaay before BB. I'm a little surprised that anyone who regularly follows this board would expect to arrive at Cooper around lunch time and secure a ball, without also encountering empty BB's. It's like showing up to the Caribbean during Christmas holidays and being surprised that you don't have the place to yourself. And then the icing on the cake is to talk about how Cooper's lunch time business is taking a hit, when there was intention to use a mooring, but not actually dine at the restaurant!

Sometimes you get lucky getting a fcfs ball at Cooper in the early afternoon.

Before BB we never had a problem getting a ball at copper. Sometimes we would wait a bit for lunch time turnover.

Sometimes we would have lunch on shore, other times not.

There is usually a ball or two that turns over in the afternoon. Beware powercats when that happens. They will blow through the mooring fields at 12 knots to beat out that slow sailboat! Swimmers and kayaks had better move!

We agree with Warren. There needs to be more moorings in the BVI and BoatyBall is encouraging local businesses to install new sea floor anchors.

This season has seen boat charters at pre Irma levels while the number of maintained moorings are significantly less. With places like Bitter End Yacht Club, Saba, Marina Cay, and others not open for business there are around 150 less mooring balls being used than pre Irma. There is definitely a supply and demand issue when it comes to maintained moorings balls in the BVI.

It will no doubt take time for these sights to rebuild and to get the number of available moorings back up to pre Irma levels. We ask for your patience and support of the locals as the rebuilding continues in the BVI.

There is no additional room for balls at both great harbor and Cooper where the main issues are happening. Why does boatyball not step forward and convert most of their balls in both locations to FCFS balls. You originally stated you would have FCFS balls. How many do you have currently available?
G

George, I look forward to the BB response.

I've lurked on the forum for quite a while and really have trouble understanding the vitriol around advanced reserving of moorings. There is a real scarcity right now and I appreciate knowing I have a place to land without racing others to the mooring fields by noon. Personally, that's worth the 7am rat race and is no different than any other industry practices that involve advanced reservations for restaurants, parking, tickets, accomodations etc. I can appreciate that it ruins lunch business at Cooper and maybe there is a lunch reservation solution on BB that would be a way to help that. But if I am emailing the Ministry of Tourism people listed above, it will be in support of the BB model and advocacy for expansion of the total mooring ball supply. I suspect there are many others lurking these threads who feel similarly and are afraid of being flamed for speaking up in support of mooring reservation capability.

I'm sure Boatty-Ball is aware of the ill will they've caused with their product. It seems to me, they could satisfy most of us, if they offered reservations for lunch and overnight on the same ball ie 10AM to 3PM and 3PM to 10AM. It's a win win.

Cooper, according to Yogi:

”Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded”

LRSail, I agree with you, but there should be more moorings in the high demand areas. It's not like you can just drop a hook in most of these locations.

We like Boaty Ball because we often book rendezvous diving for 2-3 morning of our trip. This means not getting a ball in the right location can really cause a mess. We like not having to cast off at 8 am and be on our evening ball by 11 am at places like Cooper. The best part of our last trip was diving from the North Sound with Sunchaser in the morning, making a quick lunch, leaving for Anegada at 1:30 pm and then picking up our reserved BoatyBall in the late afternoon. We really got a day a filled with fun.

Kryssa, days with multiple stops as you describe was not a problem before bb. But it sure is now.

There is zero issue anchoring at Anegada. The bottom is outstanding holding. The short fetch with Moorings on sand screws can be a issue if you get a late night thunderstorm.

When the supply and demand issue goes away there will be no need for Boaty Ball at all... everything can go back to being FCFS and wouldn't life be so much more straightforward. Also lets not kid ourselves, booked time slots for moorings through the day? Thats a crazy idea. There are enough issues with people grabbing moorings that they have not 'reserved' already via BoatyBall. That would only get substantially worse if you were trying to claim your time slot from someone over running at lunch ashore!

George, glad you asked. There is actually room in both bays for more moorings. 10 moorings were removed from Great Harbour after Irma and there are six less at Cooper than before Irma. We are hopeful that the local business will invest in replacing the ones that have been removed or damaged over the years.

BoatyBall originally built the application to simplify payment for FCFS moorings and this is still an option for mooring ball owners. At this time none of the mooring ball owners have chosen to put their moorings in the FCFS program.

However, making all the moorings FCFS will not solve the demand issue. Yesterday morning we had at least 109 boaters try and reserve 15 moorings at Cooper. If all 30 moorings at Cooper were FCFS they would have filled up fast.

As you mentioned in your previous post even if you waited around for one to open up you would probably lose out to a power cat racing through the mooring field. Unfortunately, this is something many of us have experienced.

We understand that several boaters per boat are trying to reserve balls so they they increase their chances at the morning BB lottery.

This means that far less than 109 boats were trying to get a ball.

Let’s not confuse boats and boaters.

I don't see any mileage in hating BoatyBall, Cooper Is (and to some extent Great Harbour) are the only real problem areas and as Mr BB above says, 109 boaters were trying to reserve 15 balls, so even if you had 50 FCFS balls it wouldn't solve the problem. there's a plethora of different types of customers in the area & we're on the 'sailing side', ie we like to have a sail during the day so the option to turn up to a reserved ball at 5pm is a great plus for us, to get into a scrum to arrive before midday to get a ball anywhere has zero appeal to us, it's a sailing holiday after all.
we haven't been in the highest season but dread to imagine what it might be like, Moorings / Sunsail have 250+ boats out at the same time, plus all the other companies, plus all the privateers, how on earth does everybody manage??
now that scenario I definitely would hate.

Cleary if you agree with Warren then you should consider leaving the BVI and surender the idea of Boaty Ball. Being a visiting Boater I find the Boaty ball system very restrictive and unfair to the boating community. Please contact the Ministry of Tourism and outline how to exit the business .

Instead of enjoying a BVI vacation it seems most everyone due to BB is tense and only thinking about getting up early trying to get a ball instead of taking a swim and enjoying the morning.

Sunman60,

Cooper is a beautiful anchorage. Lots to do there in the afternoon. So, I don’t see the point of arriving at Cooper at 5pm. You miss out on the snorkeling, lunch on the deck, boutique, rum bar and great happy hour.

Prior to BB, you could nearly always get a fcfs ball at cooper if you arrived by 2pm.

Highest season is not that different. Nothing to hate there.

Right on.