Two caches in each other's neighborhood

[AarClay]

Are there people who have experience with laying geocaches in the nearness of another?
I have a garden-cache in my village, and at a distance of about 150 meters there is a beautiful art where I want to hide a cache.

However, the website reports that there must be 161 meters distance.
 

How big is the chance that the inspectors approve this?

 

There are clearly two types of locations, and confusion can not arise at all.
What are your experiences with this?

[+TriciaG]

Reviewers are usually pretty strict with the proximity guideline. The only exceptions I've read about were if there were a big physical barrier between the two caches (a cliff, a canyon, an impassable river). "But there's beautiful art there" hasn't been a good enough reason, in my experience.

 

It's not about confusion between caches, but more about not overloading an area with caches.

 

What you could do, if there's anything at the art installation that will work, is to make it a puzzle/unknown or multi-cache, where the finder gleans information of some sort from the art and uses it to calculate the final cache location, which is elsewhere and 161+ meters from the garden cache.

[+Touchstone]

My experience tells me that there is very little, if any, leniency on the proximity portion of the Guidelines.  I've heard of some minor leniency when the distance is at or less than the expected error of most handheld GPS units, which is usually on the order 3 feet or so, not 30 feet like your example.

[AarClay]

Thnx for your replies!

Meanwhile, I have sent a message to the CO of the cache that is nearby, to see if it could mean anything. Maybe it will be a collaboration where the person can archive his cache and become a co-owner.

Otherwise I fear that I will move to the edge of my village.
We will see what plans are coming out.

Edited May 27, 2018 by AarClay

[+cerberus1]

28 minutes ago, AarClay said:

Meanwhile, I have sent a message to the CO of the cache that is nearby, to see if it could mean anything. Maybe it will be a collaboration where the person can archive his cache and become a co-owner.

Otherwise I fear that I will move to the edge of my village.
We will see what plans are coming out.

 

No offense, but if someone asked me to archive mine,  so I could be a "co-owner" of yours, I probably wouldn't respond.

 - Figuring my "co ownership" means it will turn out to be maintenance of a cache not mine...

Possible I guess that maybe the CO feels that their cache has served whatever purpose it had and may accept.  

 

I feel you should put that cache on a watch, and if it ever gets archived, claim "your spot" as soon as you can.

This hobby has been around for some time, and as a latecomer (I feel) it really should seem fair to simply wait your turn.

[+arisoft]

1 hour ago, AarClay said:

Meanwhile, I have sent a message to the CO of the cache that is nearby, to see if it could mean anything. Maybe it will be a collaboration where the person can archive his cache and become a co-owner.

 

Sometimes, if the current cache is easy to move, you may negotiate with the owner to move it slightly. No need to archive the cache. If this is not possible, make it a multi cache with virtual waypoint at the art installation as suggested earlier.

[+CAVinoGal]

On 5/24/2018 at 12:19 PM, AarClay said:

Are there people who have experience with laying geocaches in the nearness of another?
I have a garden-cache in my village, and at a distance of about 150 meters there is a beautiful art where I want to hide a cache.

However, the website reports that there must be 161 meters distance.
 

How big is the chance that the inspectors approve this?

 

There are clearly two types of locations, and confusion can not arise at all.
What are your experiences with this?

 

Experience, and the guidelines, state the guidelines are 161 meters, and the reviewers are quite firm on this.  The "type of location" is not relevant - saturation, and spacing them according o to the guidelines IS.  You can ask the reviewer for a "coordinate check" before creating your hide and they will say yes or no.  Apparently, you already know there is a cache in place that is too close. TriciaG's suggestion is what I would do, as you can still bring people to that beautiful art, even make them gather information about it and study it, and then take them to the actual cache that DOES fit the guidelines.

On 5/24/2018 at 5:58 PM, TriciaG said:

What you could do, if there's anything at the art installation that will work, is to make it a puzzle/unknown or multi-cache, where the finder gleans information of some sort from the art and uses it to calculate the final cache location, which is elsewhere and 161+ meters from the garden cache.

 

Our first hide ran into this issue.  We found a good hiding spot, crafted a careful camoed container that blended perfectly, hid it, submitted it (and spent quite some time on the write up as well!) and hit the proximity issue with a puzzle cache solution final.  We hadn't yet done many (any?) puzzles, and this one was a challenging one.  We did it,  and went with our son who introduced us to the hobby, to find the final and see just how far it was and where it was in relation to where we wanted to put ours.  

 

It was JUST close enough (like 10 or 20 feet too close).  And on the other side of a chain link fence and a very wide culvert.  You had to walk about 3/10 of a mile, cross a bridge, and backtrack that 3/10 down another path to get to the other cache.  We were considering presenting the situation to the reviewer for reconsideration, when my son, who knew the CO well enough to have him on speed dial, called and asked him if he could move his final far enough to get it out of range of ours.  To our surprise and great delight, he offered to archive it after we had logged it so we could then publish ours. (Now that we know this active, local CO a bit better, it's not such a surprise that he was so quick to archive the problematic cache; he's a prolific hider, depends a lot on the local community to help with maintenance, and this was an older puzzle that all the locals already had solved and it was unlikely that a casual cacher passing through the area would attempt it).  It made for a memorable first hide, and it's still in play!

 

So, there are ways to work within the guidelines and the proximity issues of trying to plant a new cache; asking the owner of a cache that is already in place to archive theirs so you can place yours is, IMO, a bit rude.  If they offer, be happy and grateful they did so!  But I wouldn't expect that as the first option.  I'd see if I could move MINE first, and not even bothe the CO that's too close.  

[+niraD]

26 minutes ago, arisoft said:

Sometimes, if the current cache is easy to move, you may negotiate with the owner to move it slightly. No need to archive the cache.

One of my Favorites is like this. The hide is very much dependent on a specific location, and the description includes a big "thank you" to the owner who moved another cache slightly to allow the location-specific cache to be listed.

[+Max and 99]

I have moved my cache literally just a few feet to accommodate a new cache hide. 

[+NYPaddleCacher]

On 5/27/2018 at 8:14 AM, AarClay said:

Meanwhile, I have sent a message to the CO of the cache that is nearby, to see if it could mean anything. Maybe it will be a collaboration where the person can archive his cache and become a co-owner.

 

Technically the site does't support co-ownership of caches.  Every cache is "owned" by one and only one user account and that account is the only one that can be used to maintain the listing (e.g. post owner maintenance logs).  Each cache does have a "Placed By" field which can be used to list multiple user name or an arbitrary "team name" but that's not necessarily the "owner" of the cache.   

[+justintim1999]

I once had to re-work an entire multi cache because of 12 feet.   No ones fault.  I just couldn't make it work in the space provided and the rules are the rules. 

 

As far as contacting the other owner,  it doesn't hurt to ask.  I was able to adopt two caches and place a series of 9 because I asked and was luck enough to discover the current cache owners were thinking about archiving.   They were more than happy to adopt them over to me so I could complete my series.   I wouldn't get my hopes up but at the very least you may be able to get the current cache owner to give you first option to adopt if they ever decide to archive.