Once again, firmly taking off my tourism hat here, but it is necessary. Our rule of dealing with anchorages and areas of the BVI that we do not think are that safe, is we just do not go there. Cane Garden Bay has been on that list for many years.
I don't want to hear "just keep a sharp eye out" "there are many more dangerous places (insert whatever)" Our reasons that we had chosen the BVI for chartering are many. One of these reasons was safety.
I am not going to repeat the entire story leading up to this, but we had guests who wanted to go to the full moon party last night at Bombas. Us anchoring at Cane Garden Bay made the most sense. Simba thought he would go along with them, and we told him that we would drop him off then as we will not leave the dinghy on dock there. When he heard our reasons, he decided to stay behind.
Our standard operating procedure here is No dinghy on the dinghy dock at night, locked or not. Someone must remain on the boat at all times with all security lights and cockpit lights blazing brightly. In addition, Simba napped in the cockpit last night. May seem extreme, but it appears to be a place that boats are often boarded in the evening while people are out enjoying the festivities, and rifled through. We did not have our motion sensors on as we had a crew member in the cockpit, otherwise, they would have been on.
When he went in to dock to pick up the guests around midnight, he found people from a couple catamarans jumping up and down as they had been robbed. Proved our point once again on why we either do not come here overnight, or take the precautions we do. I do not know any more details then that, but I am sure they will come out in the coconut telegraph soon.
I know the businesses in Cane Garden Bay are quite cognizant of what is going on and have banded together to hire a security guard at least on Friday and Saturday nights near the dinghy dock. But, this was a Thursday and a Full Moon Party and a security guard is not going to be out patrolling the anchorages, where there seems to be a lot of the thieving action.
We need to do MORE as a community, land and water based here to clean this up. It is in all our best interests. The above is what we do, I suggest boats anchoring here overnight implement some of these measures.
