Marco Island Special Anchorage

This is not a town mooring field or a spot someone found: it is a special anchorage area written into federal regulation, 33 CFR 110.74, "Marco Island, Marco River, Fla." The regulation says the area is principally for use by yachts and other recreational craft, and the Coast Pilot puts it on the south side of the river at Marco, about 1 mile from the Capri Pass entrance.

The regulation draws the area as a four-sided figure with sides of 450 and 900 feet, on bearings of 108°, 198°, 288° and 018°, beginning about 300 feet east of the Captains Landing Docks. Marco itself is a settlement at the north end of Marco Island, known locally as Old Marco Village; the Coast Pilot says it has several marinas.

Three lines of 33 CFR 110.74 decide how you lie here. Fore and aft moorings will be allowed. Fixed mooring piles or stakes are prohibited. And all moorings shall be so placed that no vessel, when anchored, shall at any time extend beyond the limits of the area.

That last one is the one that catches people. The limits are fixed and the swinging circle has to fit inside them, so the usable room is smaller than the 450 by 900 feet on paper, and a boat that would swing over the boundary is anchored wrong even if nothing is in its way.

Capri Pass lies about 0.5 mile north of Big Marco Pass and is marked by lights and daybeacons; for the pass itself the Coast Pilot advises local knowledge. From its entrance it is about 1 mile to the anchorage.

Between Capri Pass Light 2 and Big Marco River Daybeacon 18 the Coast Pilot records numerous reports of shoaling, and says vessels drawing 2 feet or more should exercise caution and obtain local knowledge before attempting passage. Two feet is a low bar, so that advice covers very nearly everything that floats through here.

Inside the anchorage area the Coast Pilot carries a dated report: in 1993, shoaling to 2 feet was reported in the anchorage area. For the Big Marco River itself it gives a midchannel controlling depth of about 4 feet. The river trends east and then south for about 11 miles from Big Marco Pass to Gullivan Bay. The mean range of tide is 2.6 feet at Coon Key. Depths change, and the DepthNote above says what these figures can and cannot answer.

Overhead, two fixed highway bridges cross at 55 feet: one over the Big Marco River about 3 miles north of Coon Key, one connecting Bear Point and Marco Island about 2.3 miles east of Capri Pass. An overhead power cable just south of the first has a clearance of 81 feet. The cable close west of the second is the awkward one – 77 feet at the center span, with 55 feet reported elsewhere.