Mooring, anchoring and graffiti
In Puerto Pollensa
In Puerto Pollensa there are 505 mooring positions. There are 894 boat owners who would like to have a mooring. Some have been on the waiting list for twenty years. Puerto Pollensa, one might say, suffers because of its success.
An alternative to mooring in the
port is to anchor on sandy seabed. A new association of boat owners has been set up to demand just this, as they feel that less and less space in the bay is going to be available because of the creation of buoy fields. Last July, there was a protest by some fifty owners against what they perceived to be a “privatisation” model
limit the enjoyment of the sea to a few.
Stressing that their demand for “free” anchoring would avoid areas with posidonia sea grass, it seems reasonable enough. However, the whole approach on behalf of authorities - Ports IB most obviously has been to control anchoring
in the bay. For years there has been insufficient control, it having been one of the blights for Puerto Pollensa along with water contamination and on land - vandalism.
In this regard, I am grateful to a reader who has been in touch to stress that graffiti vandalism dating back some years “remains for all to see”. “Not a very good advertisement for an upmarket resort.” And it isn’t, as is the case elsewhere. Other than, as the reader suggests, making vandals pay for the cost of removing graffiti, perhaps there needs to be greater initiative like that in Palma for organising cheap removal from private property by the municipal services agency.