[wind_magic]

I'm curious - what is considered "reasonable personal space" between boats when one is anchored and another one comes near it. I have been in the same situation twice where a boat is anchored and the crew of the anchored boat is trying to yell something to me across the water, so since I am still moving I casually get closer to their boat so we can have a human conversation - and in two cases the crew completely wigged out, I mean like RED ALERT DANGER mode, you would have thought I was skippering the African Queen complete with torpedoes moving at ramming speed. The reality was that in both cases I was moving at a very low rate of speed and even if I had gotten close enough to the other boat to bump it we could have fended each other's boats off with our feet the rate of speed was so slow. Anyway, the reaction in both cases seemed to be near terror, whereas me I ended up with more of a confused smirk on my face because I didn't see what the big deal was - obviously I must just be misreading the danger and it really is much more dangerous to get close to someone else's boat even in dead calm than I realize ? In both cases the other boat owners were much more experienced than I am, so I can only assume I just don't get it and that I was breaking some kind of unwritten rule of not only etiquette but safety.

I've had a number of people get near my boat to throw me a line or have a quick conversation, etc, and I was never the least bit worried about it. As long as they are not going to motor over my anchor rode or something I don't understand what the big deal is ??

So how close is too close ?