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Originally Posted by SIKSUKR
That's not such a crazy idea M&M.When I sailed around Tortola in the BVI,A lot of the mooring balls were fee based.You would hook on to a ball and later on someone would come by to collect the $20 fee.I'm not sure anyone would pay this kind of fee on Winni for a few hours usage.Granted,these moorings were really used for overnite use.The next morning it was off to the next island and harbor to find a mooring ball and a fun night ashore.
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And that's
another way to go about it. Hire a college kid to be the "mooring master" and collect fees from all the boats that use the mooring balls. Give him/her a free mooring and float whilst on the job and you might get find some applicants
Course this further drives up the cost of running the feild but maybe it's cheaper than meters (probably not but certainly more practical). In any case secondcurve, jrc and Airwaves make a good point in that unless there's a real problem that this solves or somehow makes $$ for the State, there won't be any interest. Certainly the boaters who presently use the sand bar or Braun Bay gain little and lose something. That's why I suggested other, presently unused, places become, as APS put it, DRZ's with mooring balls. Moving some people away from the home owners so both parties can, well, party to their own music (so to speak) while bringing in some $$ to the State (or at least allowing some Rep to drone about summer job creation) and increasing the boating things-to-do, places-to-go quotient of the lake (meet ya at DRZ2 for rock snorkeling) and then further add in that in that the MP won't have to play "Nanny" anymore .... the idea might have enough appeal to catch on. Well, maybe*
Certainly there have got to be other places than just the Witches which could make viable mooring sites. Not every raft-up needs to be at a beach or be able to touch bottom with your toes.
So again what does it cost to "run" a mooring field and then what $$/hr would have to be charged to break even ? Would anyone pay this amount ?? Let's take a cut at it. I figure there's maybe 15 useable weekends in a season, add in a few holidays and you get 33 days where you'd charge for the mooring. Charge between the hours of 7am and 7pm and you've got 396 hrs/ball/season. Charge, I dunno, $2/hr and figure an 65% occupancy rate and you've got ~$500/ball/season. Amortize the initial cost of the mooring over ? 10 ? years and figure an average feild size of ? 20 ? balls (to spread the mooring master's pay across) and could it come close to working financially ? Would people pay more $/hr ?? Y'all tell me.
*pigs do fly, really, I've seen them. Just nowhere near as good as Warthogs or Falcons.
