Update June 16th.
Money Bay, Norman Island, is a marine protected area and the developer was supposed to move entry for development to the other side of island.
I have not had too much time yet to dig up information on the developments that are occuring on Norman Island as of yet, but I did take this off of one of the local blogs the other day at saildivebvi and have reprinted the picture and thoughts on the development from someone who makes their living on the waters of the BVI here. So, all this is from that site, with permission!
Money Bay
Well, my story on Money Bay. Since we have come to the BVI’s to do charters almost a decade ago, it has been our favorite anchorage bar none here. You have to work at it a bit to get here, but the diving on the outside here is fantastic. There are all kinds of sand dollars on the bottom here. Good shells wash up on the beach. It is really a one boat anchorage. When we put ourselves in here, we tie our bum onto the beach around a tree, and then noone else can come in here. We often have a bonfire on the beach here at night. We do not have to put up an anchor light as noone ever comes in here at night. We get no cel coverage, we get no internet connections, we see NO lights at night, other than the stars and if it is quite clear the light haze from St Croix. The reefs outside here are virgin and unspoiled. If weather conditions permit we spend time here as often as we can. Unfortunately, it is going to be another place in the BVI that is being developed. A couple years ago when Jarecki bought Norman Island, this entire area back here was surveyed by the salt pond with the intent of putting in high end low density housing. We only saw survey stakes for a couple years, so imagine our sadness when we came around the corner and saw the backhoe building the road down here!
Some funny things have happened to us at Money Bay over the years! I know that there have been shipwrecks here (hence the name, Money Bay) and we know of some people years ago who had a sand blower and brought up bits of things in the anchorage, but no money that I know off! A few years ago, we were sitting here in the afternoon. We were off charter, it was summer, so we were just hanging out. We noticed the police boat across the way. We picked up the binoculars and could see quite a few people. We knew that the police would come back here and shoot goats for target practice and meat! Since it was a Sunday afternoon, we originially thought that was what they were doing. One of the police boats came closer and we could see women, children and coolers do we thought they were taking their families out for a picnic! How nice! We stayed there for another couple days (remember, no communication back there...) and when we read the newspaper after we came back to town we read that almost 40 illegal immigrants had been caught there, washed over the reef and many had drowned. What we saw was the round up operation! What we found very funny, was in that whole time, not one police officer came over to ask us where we had seen anything, or, indeed, to check that we did not have any illegal immigrants on board!
By the salt pond there now you can still see spanish bibles, articles of clothing etc. Unscruplous people who have been hired to take illegal immigrants to the USVi drop them off here on the islands and tell them that it is the USVI! Less chance of the people who have been hired to take the people to the USVI being caught back here!
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