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Mooring buoy or your own anchor: what applies in Mediterranean bays?
Short answer
Where a buoy field has been laid, anchoring is often restricted, above all over protected seagrass.
The buoy does not take the responsibility off you: whoever ties up still checks the line,
the size limit and the weather.
Sail into a popular bay in Croatia, the Balearics, the Côte d'Azur or Italy and you are ever more likely to find a field of mooring buoys rather than open anchoring ground. The reason is usually the seabed. Seagrass meadows grow extremely slowly, and an anchor swinging on its chain for hours tears them up. In protected areas anchoring is therefore often banned in certain zones or allowed only on sand, and enforcement is getting stricter. Which rule applies in which bay is in the base's area notes and in the notices issued locally.
A buoy is convenient, but it is not a guarantee. It is laid for a certain length of boat and a certain wind strength, often marked on the buoy itself or in the operator's information. Make fast with your own line through the eye, better with two, and never with a line somebody else left behind. Look at the eye and the line as far as you can from on deck. And keep an eye on the weather: if the wind swings onshore or builds hard, a bay with a buoy is no more comfortable than one without. If a buoy parts, the questions afterwards are whether it was overloaded and whether you could have seen that coming.
On a charter that means reading up before you go on which bays have buoy fields and which of those have to be booked or paid for, and keeping a fallback bay with a sandy bottom in the plan. If you anchor yourself, drop on pale sand rather than dark patches, let out plenty of chain and check the anchor has bitten once it is dug in. At night, someone aboard should be listening to the wind. And remember that if your anchor drags or the buoy line fails and you hit a neighbour, you answer for that damage personally, not the deposit.
Worth remembering
Buoy
convenient, but laid for one length and one wind
Anchor
only on sand and only where it is allowed
Check what the bay allows before you go in, and let the weather decide, not the buoy.
Questions
What owners ask us about this
Can I anchor freely next to a buoy field?
That depends on the area. Some protected areas ban anchoring around the buoy field altogether, others only over seagrass. The base's area notes and the local authority's notices tell you what applies in that bay.
Who pays if a buoy parts and the boat drifts?
There is no single answer. It turns on whether the buoy was faulty or overloaded, for instance by a boat that was too long or by too much wind. Photograph the buoy and the line and report it to the base and the operator straight away.
How do I spot seagrass when anchoring?
From above, seagrass shows as large dark patches, while sand looks pale and turquoise. Drop the anchor on the pale ground and watch that the chain does not sweep across the grass as the boat swings.
Related
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