Well, not exactly "ownership" in the fee-simple sense. What is being sold is a leasehold agreement with the Santa Catalina Island Company (the "Company") for the mooring. For the many tens of thousands of dollars demanded for these leases, the leaseholder gets the privilege of reserving use of "your" mooring ball, provided you give the Harbor Department in that particular cove something like 48 hour notice of arrival. If you are not on your mooring ball, the Company reserves the right to rent your mooring to others, and keep the mooring fees (for a 50' mooring, something like $2/ft/day) for themselves. In addition, the leaseholder must pay a lease fee to the Company for several thousand dollars a year for maintenance of the mooring. BUT, the lease owner gets to moor for free when you are on "your" mooring. Such a deal!
Outrageous? Yeah. But the asked (and answered) cost of these scarce leasehold moorings reflect the supply and demand. Don't want to pay to play in Avalon? Go and take your chances a mooring is available, or don't go. Many is the boater who has showed up Saturday morning in August to be turned away, and had to return to the mainland, with his weekend in the toilet. Anchoring is not explicitly forbidden, but mooring balls fill almost 100% of the coves in Catalina. 100'+ depths generally discourage anchoring out, not to mention the chop and wakes from passing boats.
I doubt a single leasehold mooring has EVER been turned back to the Company for inability to continue to make lease payments, or lack of interest. Most are passed generation to generation through the family, or sold on the open market as the examples provided.
Guess why I moved to the PNW????
Pete
