LETTERS comfortable sitting area with free Wi-Fi, ice, dinghy water stations, trash/hazardous materials disposal, vehicle parking, bike racks, work shop, mail package delivery, library, showers/Laundromat, helpful staff, etc. Let’s just say for purposes of this discussion that with adequate staff to operate the facility, the annual operating cost comes out to $225 per boat. While the mooring field and wet slips may be near full during the winter months bringing in excess revenue, during the summer months the situation is just the opposite. Yet the marina still provides the same services year around whether on a mooring ball or anchored out. So is it not fair to make each boater using the facilities pay the same fees to provide for the operation of the marina? Both moored and anchored boats are provided the same amenities ashore, with the boats on a mooring ball paying an additional $75 to use a ball. The “it’s not fair” argument pretends that the anchored boats are somehow being treated unfairly, when in reality they are getting the same privileges as the moored boats with the exception of a mooring ball. Whether you have the means or desire to pay should not be an issue. You choose to live on a boat. However, living on a boat is not a right. Like almost anything else in our country, it is a privilege. Everyone should have to pay their own way. Just because you can’t or don’t want to pay the required fee doesn’t somehow entitle you to make someone else pay your share. We are individuals and should not expect a community to provide for our needs based on fairness or any other reason. Jonathan Bickel SV Papillon Jonathan, I agree with you on many points. Absolutely, if they are providing many shore services, those who use them should pay. And all the services provided by the marina there are quite good and cost money. But I am promoting free dockage for people who just want to come ashore from their anchored-out boat and need a place to tie up (and not for permanently anchored live-aboards, but transients). There should be dockage all over for these people. If these people want to use all the shore facilities, like the ones at Boot Key Harbor Marina, then they should pay a fee. But if they just want to bring their dinghy ashore, they should be able to for free, or a for nominal fee like what is charged for parking your car in town (unless it’s free, too). This, even though maintaining roads is a very high expense compared to what a dinghy needs, and is paid for by government. But I also believe that toilets and drinking water should be free to all, regardless of location, whether from a boat, walking, or driving. After all, that is a right that only got taken away by too many people living in one place, which required the need for toilets and control of human waste because the land can’t absorb too much in one place. And when you gotta go, you gotta go. I’ll have to disagree with you on one point: Living on a boat is a right. If it’s a privilege, then who grants it? But maybe you are referring to living on a boat and mooching off others. If that’s the case, I agree. I just don’t like the direction I often see us heading in: towards a society where every single item is paid for and broken down to its own user fee—a society I call a “turnstile society.” Some services society provides should just generally be free to us all, so we don’t all go nuts—dropping a coin in a slot for every move. Editor 12
December 2012
SOUTHWINDS
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