ATTENTION!

This site has oodles of information about boating and the San Juans, it helps to use the search box BELOW to find what interests you.
Search - "things to do" or try "places to go"
search - Sucia Island
search - Friday Harbor
search - hiking or bicycling
try - kayak - try CAMPING - try Anchoring

++++ ============================= All Posts Below

Current Posts Below

11/19/2013

What is Proper Dock and Float Etiquette at our State Marine Parks in the San Juan Islands

     We were having a lively discussion about whether a boater should pay .60 cents a foot for their entire boats length, or just the portion in front of the float. All we managed to do was come up with more unanswered scenarios.

  • If you have a sixty footer parked at a forty foot float, do you pay for forty or sixty?
  • If your twenty footer is forced to hang out ten feet because some lunkhead is hogging the dock do you have to pay for ten or twenty feet? (half the boat is probably too much in some places)
  • If a clown doesn't pull down to the end of the float and leaves seven feet of unusable space forcing you to anchor, should he have to pay for that seven feet he has wasted
  • What if same bozo parks his thirty five footer in the middle of a fifty foot float and wastes seven and half feet of space at each end, should he pay for the fifty feet he is really hogging?
  • Should the park ranger get involved in policing float etiquette?
  • Is it ok to move someones pride and joy seven feet without their permission?
  • How about the dinghy taking space floating at the back end, should it be counted too?
  • When two comedians are rafting at the dock and the sign says "no rafting" do they pay 60 cents per foot per boat or just the dock side boat, or the bigger
Seriously though, please be considerate and try to maximize dock space, some of our San Juan floats only hold two boats on each side, and our bigger or littler friends may easily wipe out more than they need to. There is not a boat out there that can't hang out a little at the pointed end, and that may make the difference getting another boat squeezed in at the other end.  You can be thanked or cursed, you're the skipper.


  • What if a boats sprit overhangs a another's dinghy, do they split the 60 cents a foot that they are sharing?
  • If the anchor buoy your tied to and already paid for breaks loose and floats away, can you get your fee back?
  • If a sailboat rafts with a power boat, what is their offspring named? is it sterile?

Reid Harbor dock on Stuart Island