Not to derail the subject of mixed metal mooring anchors and magic mushrooms, but is anyone allowed to create their own mooring wherever they want? Do you need any local authority approval before planting a mooring in public water? Suppose someone else hooks onto your mooring when you're off sailing - can you legally remove their boat?
Can't speak for every community and every state, but where we are, you need a permit from the town to sink a mooring, and that mooring has to meet certain requirements. Our harbor, for example, requires granite blocks of a certain weight depending on the boat they're going to hold, and they must be inspected periodically. Because our harbor is full, the waiting list for a mooring is years.
Next town over, there are many fine anchorages that were starting to get peppered with moorings by people too lazy to set an anchor. So the town has a moratorium on new moorings.
The Army Corps of Engineers has gotten involved in some cases where people wanted to sink moorings in certain anchorages. Can't remember what trips the ACE button -- might be lack of FT harbormaster or something?? I should know, I was on a first-name basis with the ACE guy when some joker was trying to pepper Penobscot Bay's most pristine anchorages with $20/night moorings.
Rant on:
I can only recall one instance where a boat took our mooring w/o permission. We were tied up at the dock, loading up for our annual cruise, not really watching the boat traffic. We finally got ready to cast off and put our boat back on her mooring for the night and there's a trawler sitting on it, with no one on board. Couldn't believe it. A few weeks later, we were observing a work boat from one of the local marinas motoring from one vacant mooring to another, as if to check them out. This marina owns 15 or so of its own moorings and claims to "manage" hundreds of others in our harbor. Mind you, there is nothing in the town regulations giving anyone permission to "manage" privately owned moorings. I can't say for sure, but I strongly suspect this marina put that trawler on our mooring that night, so the trawler folks figured they were good to go and left to get a shower and dinner or something.
I have had a sour taste in my mouth about that marina ever since.
Rant off.
