Jones Island Mooring Buoy Breaks Away

Can you trust the state-maintained anchor buoys?     

I would like to but, who is  really responsible for the safety of your boat?

  Wow, it almost got us! Well not really but maybe it almost got someone.

We visited Jones one night right after the Fourth of July, and we anchored between the park buoys.

 We set our anchor well and stern tied to shore.  During the night, it really kicked up, the wind came from the north, blowing straight into the cove.  We were up at 3 am checking things, it wasn't until mid-morning that things calmed down.

Bid deal you say!

One week later, we were back at Jones, and we anchored in exactly the same place, but the park buoy we anchored behind was gone, it was laying, along with a bunch of rusty chain up at the top of the gangplank.

Flashback to the night a week earlier and I remember a rather large yacht tied up in front of us, and we were worried about ourselves dragging onto the beach.

  No one even considered that a park buoy would give way and set a vessel onto us.  BTW, at Roche Harbor some years ago, a big Bayliner dragged into us. We know firsthand how difficult things can get when boats don't stay where you want.

Here's the buoy, The shackle pin is missing.  It's hard to see in the picture, but the chain inside the tube is also ready to give way.  SURPRISE!

I have suggested before that before leaving an expensive boat tied to one of these things, one should back down on them just like setting your anchor. Hopefully that's what the last visitor did to this one.

It's interesting that the parks dept. installed new pilings and floats at Jones Island but ignored the obvious deteriorated chains.

Much later, I happened to be talking with a park ranger and mentioned buoy maintenance, and he said they were handled by a different department. Oh well! I guess that explains it.  I'm backing down even harder.