USVI-On-Line

So we were sitting at Maho this afternoon enjoying the beautiful views. About 2pm, this guy comes within 20 feet of the beach and drops a couple of anchors. He unloaded a family and then proceeded to wait for about a half hour while they swam around the bay. I guess my question is … is this even legal??
https://flic.kr/p/mNq8wd

As far as I know it's totally legal. People do it all the time. In the National Park the ranger will arrive by boat and collect the fee if they're still there.

How annoying. I always thought you had to stay by the mooring balls, and if you did come up to the beach you had to come via the dinghy channel between the markers.
Guess we've just been lucky having never seen this??

You can only come close to shore by way of staying in between the red and green bouys. If you are dropping people off you may bring the dinghy up on the beach in the buoy area.. The boats should always tie up to the mooring balls and never drop anchor in the swim area. Some of the really big boats drop anchor further out.

You can only come close to shore by way of staying in between the red and green bouys. If you are dropping people off you may bring the dinghy up on the beach in the buoy area.. The boats should always tie up to the mooring balls and never drop anchor in the swim area. Some of the really big boats drop anchor further out.

P600 that's what I thought. Of course as you can see by the picture, this is not a dingy. They actually ended up chasing people out of the water and I was concerned about the others swimming while he threw additional anchors over.

Unfortunately, the VI National Park is among the most under-funded in the Park system, and is operating with about half the staff they were budgeted for in the past. Federal cuts do not allow replacement of rangers who leave, so enforcement of regulations is less consistent than it should be. A segment of the population also seem to be acting increasingly "entitled" and more oblivious of why there are regulations to begin with.

Two years ago we saw the same type of "beaching" at lamshur. The beach was crazy crowded that day and the boat just backed right into shore like they owned the place. Actually, the boat looked very similar to the one in the op's picture

Does not look legal to me.

Anchoring within 100 feet of the beach is not legal. The following is extracted from the attached link to the NPS Marine Guide:
"Do not anchor within 200 feet of any mooring,100 feet from any regulatory buoy, or closer than 100 feet to park beaches."

http://www.nps.gov/viis/planyourvisit/u ... gGuide.pdf

Perhaps you could email the picture to the park so the rangers can be on the lookout for this guy.

That is a day charter out of STJ - must be a new captain. Boats 26' and under are allowed to enter beach area between the red and green channel markers to drop off passengers but then must leave and tie to a mooring.

Pia

I can't make out the name of the boat and admittedly we are beach people so I know very little about boat charters, but if someone knows the name can the operator be contacted about this?

Speaking of rangers. A couple of months ago was the one and only time I witnessed a ranger on the beach at Hawksnest talking to someone about having a bottle on the beach. That was the first time since the government shutdown and also then last time I've seen a ranger working (other than Trunk) and I am at the beach a lot. They seem to have disappeared!

Program the NPS phone number into your phone. When you see something like this give the rangers a call and they'll send someone out right away if they can get a citation... lol
340-776-6201

When we were on STJ the week of March 15th, we were at Maho. There was a group in the water and sitting on the beach with glass beer bottles. A friend of ours nicely talked to the group about their glass bottles and that if a Ranger saw them they could get a ticket. In fact our friend had seen a Ranger pull in the parking area across from Maho. I bet it wasn't 10 minutes later and the Ranger was on the beach calling the three guys out of the water and tickets were written! We tried to warn them and quite frankly, their response to my friend was pretty flippant, so I guess lesson learned!

We actually saw several Rangers in vehicles and patrolling beaches during our visit that week.