Winston Ross

07/03/2008
Crew performs hull of a job
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
NORTH BEND – As an homage to the cone-shaped hat he wears while straddling the deck of the New Carissa’s hull, Bruce Jeter has earned the nickname “Tin Man.” But it’s a different kind of metal that Jeter has learned to conquer in the weeks he’s spent aboard the old wood chip freighter: rusting steel.
With the gun clap echo of his ax reverberating into the morning mist, the Tin Man pounded away at the ship on Wednesday, rattling rust loose from the deck behind the former engine room, sending course particles skittering down into the sea. Sometimes he uses the fine edge of the ax blade; sometimes the blunt end.
A cutting torch prefers a rust-free surface, explains David Parrot, managing director of Titan Salvage, the Florida company that’s taking the ship apart, piece by piece. Jeter’s methodical work clears away patches of rust to ready it for the torches.
“We had Bruce on painting, and he hated it,” Parrot said. “So obviously he’s found his niche in bashing rust off of steel.”
There are plenty of ways to carve a niche on board the quickly disappearing ship, if the jobs themselves are somewhat unromantic. Eric “Rabbit” Hickey, David “Scrap Pile” Greco and Eric Woelfel know their way around a cutting torch, carefully drawing lines in the ship with the aid of an oxygen-fueled propane flame, scrambling about the New Carissa’s tilted frame and dissecting it.
Woelfel sliced a line straight down the starboard edge of the ship on Wednesday, then cut more strips to intersect that line in preparation for the deck’s eventual demise. The stern itself shields the crew from inclement weather, so it’ll be spared until the last minute – which is fast approaching.
Removal of the New Carissa is going swimmingly, Parrot said, thanks in large part to the precise positioning of the jack-up barges and the tram Titan built to ferry workers and equipment from shore to the jack-up barges that serve as platforms for the massive project. The rig allows workers to keep carving apart the ship even when the fog or the wind would prevent a helicopter flight.
More days on the job means more of the ship sheared into pieces. Parrot said 15 percent of the wreckage is gone now, and he expects in the next two weeks that enough of the New Carissa’s extremities will be stripped from the hull to allow the jack-up barge’s giant hydraulic pullers to latch onto the stern and yank it far enough out of the water to cut apart the sections now submerged in the surf and sand.
“It’s going great,” Parrot said. “We didn’t expect to get this far this fast.”
As the cutters worked above water, diver Billy Wehnes dropped into the shallows to the north of the wreck, where a submerged crane is mired in the sand. Attempts to pull the crane free with hydraulic force were unsuccessful, so Wehnes manipulated a super-hot oxythermic torch beneath the surface, which sent smoke and Wehnes’ spent air bubbling out of the water.
“It burns at 18,000 degrees (Fahrenheit), which is hotter than the sun,” salvage diver Mike Murphysaid. “It cuts through wet steel like glue.”
Balmy weather allowed Titan to scrap its plan to use a 17-ton tank workers freed from the ship’s stern as a cofferdam to blunt wave action from the crane demolition. Instead, crews hauled the tank aboard a third barge, bound for the wrecking yard, and Wehnes worked unabated.
Even up close, aboard a jack-up barge, it’s a little hard to imagine that the task is really being completed. For nine years, the ship’s rusting hull has sat wedged in the breaking surf, unchanged but by the relentless crash of the ocean upon its deck and the almost undetectable but constant erosion of salt and wind coupled with barnacle growth upon the 1,200-ton frame.
The state has consistently promised to get this “junk” off the north spit, but even as Titan’s barges moved into position alongside it, there’s something hard to fathom about the New Carissa’s removal. It had become as much a part of the landscape as the lighthouse at Heceta Head.
However surreal, it’s happening, and it’s happening fast.

11/02/2008
Market shift snags liquid gas project
Changing demands and new technology may affect the course of a Coos Bay plan
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
COOS BAY – He has faced down skeptics, foes, naysayers and doomsayers. A liquefied natural gas terminal in Coos Bay is safe, good for the economy, will lower energy prices and bring in new businesses, says Bob Braddock, the manager of the Jordan Cove Energy Project.
But now Braddock may have found his toughest opponent in the quest to turn the Oregon Coast into a frontier for foreign sources of liquefied gas: the free market.
When Braddock first arrived in Oregon, he had some compelling arguments behind a proposal to build storage enough to hold 6.4 billion cubic feet of gas and a 223-mile pipeline to pump the gas over the Coast Range and into California.
Domestic supplies of natural gas were dwindling while demand for it in Oregon was on the rise. The skyrocketing price of oil only intensified the search for alternative forms of energy so Oregon and other parts of the country could wean themselves from foreign crude.
But a few developments in recent months have turned that argument on its head.
Now, international supplies of liquefied natural gas are on the wane, and competition from an energy-strapped Japan and developing countries such as India and China are driving up the price of the resource. Fifty-five percent of the global demand for liquefied gas comes from Asia alone.
At the same time, new technology has punctured huge swaths of shale – a sedimentary rock found in places like Texas and Louisiana – and production from shale gas wells has more than tripled in the past decade. A record 4,185 wells were drilled in 2007 alone. The United States is now sitting on 2,247 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, up from an estimate of 1,530 trillion cubic feet in 2006, according to a study published in July by Navigant Consulting. That’s a 118-year supply of the stuff.
“There are many hundreds of trillion cubic feet locked in gas shales,” said Philip Budzik, an oil and gas analyst with the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an agency that’s housed by the federal Department of Energy but operates as an independent consultant.
In other words, all of a sudden there’s plenty of gas in the country; so much that those who extract it are starting to back away from shale drilling, because an oversupply is driving prices dangerously close to the cost of pulling it out of the ground.
The supply and demand situation is so backwards, in fact, that some proposed import terminals are now switching to export, because it’s become more economical to sell gas overseas than to buy it.
What does that mean for Braddock’s big plans?
“It’s a bad idea, when you think about the kind of volume you need to justify a liquefaction plant and you look at the amount of liquefaction on the U.S. Gulf Coast that’s significantly underutilized today,” said David Purcell, industry managing director with Pickering Energy, a research firm that advises energy investors. “I’d be shocked if you could get one built in Oregon.”
More palpable, said Purcell, is a pipeline from the east, to ferry domestic supplies across the Rocky Mountains.
“One, it’s a more realistic project, and two, there’s a public conception around LNG imports, whether it’s right or wrong, that they’re bad, they’re dangerous,” Purcell said. “It’s hard to get terminals past the permitting stage.”
The question of need isn’t covered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s permitting process, which is a frustration to Gov. Ted Kulongoski, said spokeswoman Jillian Schoene.
“We know demand is increasing, but they just let the market decide, rather than being more thoughtful in their approach,” Schoene said. “Is LNG the best way to meet demands for natural gas, or is it the three or four pipeline proposals in the works that would bring in natural gas from the Rockies? Maybe we don’t need LNG. We don’t know the answer to that.”
To find that answer, and perhaps to better influence the federal process, the governor is planning to set up a council of energy advisers that will study the economics of liquefied gas and alternative energy sources.
Braddock admits that this isn’t exactly the best business climate in which to be building a liquefied gas terminal right now, the credit crunch notwithstanding. But he maintains that this is a temporary situation and that it will change in the coming years. An Oregon terminal and pipeline is an investment that looks 20 years into the future, he says.
Yes, Braddock acknowledges, the price of foreign natural gas has shot up recently – to as high as $20 per million BTUs – but that’s largely because an earthquake in Japan knocked out a major nuclear power plant there, and the Japanese have had to buy copious amounts of gas in response, to meet the needs of an energy-hungry citizenry. Once the plant comes back online, Japan will back off, global demand will slacken and prices will go down, Braddock predicts, especially as new sources materialize for gas in other parts of the world.
Liquefied natural gas tends to serve local markets, said Phyllis Martin, another energy analyst at the Energy Information Administration, who studies the international market.
“Something built in Oregon is really going to reach Oregon and California, and could be useful,” Martin said.
Domestically, even if there’s a 110-year supply of shale gas, as has been estimated, it’s still more expensive to produce, at $5 to $6 per million BTUs, than traditional means. And as the economics of liquefied gas adjust in the coming years, it’ll become less and less attractive, Braddock predicts.
“One cannot talk about production without talking about at what price,” Braddock said. “Even though there’s capacity, it’s the most expensive gas produced in North America. We have reached the point where a lot of those wells, if they had to make the decision to drill them today, they probably wouldn’t pencil out. … I anticipate a decline in about 18 months.”
In the meantime, there is likely to be a lag in construction starts for proposed terminals, even if they meet federal and state approvals, Braddock said. Jordan Cove hasn’t gotten its permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yet, though it has secured most state permits. Another proposed terminal on the Columbia River, Bradwood Landing, does have its federal go-ahead but is farther behind in the state process.
Braddock frequently has said there’s only enough demand in Oregon for one project, so whichever gets greenlighted by investors such that construction begins, the rest will fade away. He puts the likelihood of a terminal in Coos Bay at 50/50.
“It won’t get better than that until we actually start digging dirt,” he said.

03/22/2009
Students choose sides as teen faces charges
The public show of support, however, angers advocates for sexual assault victims
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
COOS BAY – A jury of his peers has yet to decide whether 18-year-old Marshfield High School honor student Marcus Beckett is guilty of raping and sodomizing a 14-year-old classmate.
But that hasn’t prevented some of Beckett’s classmates at Marshfield from publicly taking sides, to the dismay of advocates for sexual assault victims, who say the students’ actions could have repercussions beyond this one situation.
Only two days after Beckett’s arrest March 11, Marshfield senior Jessey Comstock printed messages of support for his friend – including “free Marcus” and “we love Marcus” – on about 50 T-shirts and passed them out at school. Administrators quickly told the 40 or so students who decided to put on the shirts that they could either find something else to wear or leave campus, noting that at least one of the T-shirts could be seen as intimidating Beckett’s accuser, who still attends classes at school.
That shirt’s slogan: “Liar, Liar.”
The students, some grumbling that their rights to free speech were being trampled, either went home or changed clothes, but their support for Beckett has not waned. Then, last week, an estimated 70 students wore black to symbolize their belief that Beckett is innocent. They raised $1,800 to help with the student’s legal bills, and an off-campus “Support Marcus” dance is planned for April 3.
“I’ve been his friend since I was 5 years old,” Comstock said. “He’s not the guy to do this, to be accused of rape. He has nothing to gain from raping a young lady. He’s an honor roll student, a leader, an athlete. He had a lot of hopes and dreams.”
Beckett, a football player, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The public demonstrations of support for Beckett by students have shocked and angered advocates of sexual assault victims, who say they could have a damaging influence on rape victims who fear recrimination and blame if they speak out.
“It’s very harmful to the victim, the family and potential other victims out there who will not come forward because they don’t want to face this ridicule,” said Kathryn Gabel, a child advocate and program manager with the Children’s Advocacy Center in Coos Bay. “We’re very surprised, and we feel there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
Beckett faces charges of first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy, unlawful sexual penetration, first-degree sex abuse, third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy, third-degree sex abuse and contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor. His bail initially was set at $2.5 million, then lowered to $750,000.
He was arrested after a 14-year-old girl reported to a Coos Bay police officer on March 6 that she had been raped by Beckett in the basement of his house. The girl said Beckett held her down on a bed, took her pants off and forced her to have sex, despite the girl repeatedly telling him “no” and “stop,” according to a police officer’s statement supporting the arrest warrant.
Beckett told police the two engaged in consensual oral sex and that he started to have sexual intercourse with her but then he decided against it, according to the police document. Beckett said the sex was consensual, that it was the minor’s idea and that he thought she was 15 or 16 years old.
Under Oregon law, minors under the age of 18 cannot legally consent to sex, and sex with those under the age of 16 is considered second-degree rape.
Scott Berkowitz is the president and founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that operates a national sexual assault hot line. He, too, was alarmed by the turn of events in Coos Bay.
“There’s a good reason we don’t leave establishing the validity of a charge up to a bunch of high school students,” Berkowitz said. “That’s what the police are there for. I don’t think it should come down to a popularity contest.”
Berkowitz said it is somewhat common for women who file rape complaints to find themselves being put on trial. The 19-year-old woman who accused basketball superstar Kobe Bryant of rape faced intense scrutiny and criticism after accusing Bryant of raping her in Colorado during the summer of 2003, as did the woman who accused three lacrosse players from Duke University of raping her in 2006.
Sometimes, allegations of rape turn out to be false or too difficult to prove. In both the Bryant and Duke cases, authorities eventually dropped all charges.
Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier, who is handling Beckett’s prosecution, offered no comment on the trial-by-teen-opinion other than to say “if the kids want to protest, let the kids protest.”
Comstock said he’s content to let the legal process play out, but wants to show support for his friend in the meantime. He doesn’t think the school should have told him and his classmates they couldn’t express that on campus, he said.
“Me and a lot of my fellow classmates believe our First Amendment rights were (with)held unjustly,” Comstock said.
Marshfield principal Travis Howard said the school’s issue was with the shirts that were offensive toward the victim.
“We want to make sure the victim is safe,” Howard said. “It comes down to trying to protect the learning environment.”
The freedom-of-speech issues are a little tricky here, said Dave Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Schools have fairly wide discretion to prevent speech that disrupts the educational process, and personal attacks would certainly fall into that category, he said.
“The part I have questions about is that they asked them to take off the T-shirts that said `Free Marcus,’” Fidanke said. “That’s pushing it.”
Beckett is still in custody, but a judge will consider a release hearing this week, Frasier said. He also has a change of plea hearing scheduled for April 20.
Winston Ross can be reached at (541) 902-9030 or at winston.ross@registerguard.com.

04/28/2003
New reporter takes over coastal beat
For Winston Ross, it’s all uncharted territory, but he’s eager to discover it
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
I’d been a resident of Florence for all of three days before someone offered me birthday cake in a coffee shop.
When I couldn’t find the right adapter in a hardware store, the good chap who worked there spent several minutes tracking it down and then wandered around the store until he found me, to deliver it.
They smiled at the post office. Dropped off a basket of free stuff at the front door. Chatted it up at the checkstand. Gave me a lesson in wiring in home electronics.
All without even knowing my name.
I’ve but shaken a smattering of hands up and down the Oregon Coast thus far, but in a few short days, I know I’ll enjoy being your new coastal reporter. The people here stand out, as kind and courteous, thoughtful and intelligent.
It’ll take months before I feel like I’ve developed enough contacts to know what’s going on on the coast. But I thought it’d be good to start by introducing myself.
I was born in the south, but moved to Berkeley, Calif., as a young child, where I grew up. When my mother moved to Alaska when I was in the ninth grade, I started spending summers there, and my last year of high school was in Dutch Harbor – a good lesson on living in a small town and surviving rugged winters.
I’ve known I wanted to be a journalist since the eighth grade, so the decision to head to Missouri for journalism school was an easy one. It’s one of the best schools in the country, and I could afford it, with some help from the government.
After 4 1/2 years there, I found my first real job at the Spokane Spokesman-Review, where I covered a small city called Hayden, health and social issues, education and, finally, general assignment in North Idaho during my three-year tenure.
But I grew restless, as we youngsters often do, and soon yearned for a new swath of territory to explore, a new community to figure out.
I started job hunting, in probably the worst market of the past 10 years. I knew it would take months to find the right match.
Then one day my mother called to say The Register-Guard had posted an opening for an Oregon Coast reporter. I doubt many of you read journalism job listings that much, but when that kind of opening arises in this business, you take a second glance.
The rest of the tale is that I applied and they hired me, thankfully. I’ll be working from home here in Florence, and asking for your help, on a regular basis.
I’m brand-new to Oregon, not just the coast. My father lives in Corvallis, and my mother spent many years in Amity, but my only experience here has been as a visitor. I need you to fill me in on what’s happening in this area, so I can do my best to share it with our readers. The newspaper is a vital forum for its community and an essential watchdog of government.
But, like government, it only works with participation.
I must warn you here that I’m just one guy, in a tiny wired office in one city on the coast, trying to keep the Register-Guard’s readership up to speed on issues from Coos Bay to Newport and beyond, as the news dictates. I will miss things by accident, and I’ll have to pass up good story ideas on purpose.
But I’ll do my best to cover this area like a blanket, and to continue the legacy that Larry Bacon has carved out over the past 32 years. You may find my style to be different, as well as the stories I’m interested in pursuing. I’m not Larry, but I will work hard at this job, and do the best I can to cover this coast.
I’ll also do it with integrity, and energy. You might not always like what you read beneath this byline, but it will always be as fair as I could possibly make it. If only one viewpoint of a controversial issue makes it into print, it’s because the other side chose not to comment, or couldn’t be reached. Objectivity may be a misnomer, but fairness isn’t. You’ll always get the chance to speak your piece with me.
That said, I need to know all sides of an issue before I can even try and report it with balance. If you think I’ve missed something, please let me know. Calling or e-mailing doesn’t mean I’m going to splash your picture across the front page. Telling me what you truly believe doesn’t mean you have to tell the whole world.
Here’s how to reach me: My phone number in Florence is (541) 902-9030. I have a cell phone that fades in and out, like so many do, at (541) 913-0672, and a fax machine that jams every now and then at (541) 997-2036.
For now, that fax line is the same as the one that I hook into the Internet with, so if you’re trying to send a fax and get a busy signal, be patient, or reach me via e-mail.
I’m hoping to establish a high-speed Internet connection here soon. My e-mail address is rgcoast@oregonfast.net. I’m good about checking it, but it may take a day or so to get back to you.
And my home address is 444 Kingwood St. in Florence, 97439. Feel free to drop by from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Otherwise you might catch me in grimy sweatpants, sucking down a beer (I’m kidding, of course – sort of.)
I’m endlessly excited about getting to know the Oregon Coast, to explore its natural secrets and find out just what makes the people here so friendly.
Thanks in advance for keeping this community’s conversation alive.

12/19/2008
OSU professor picked to head federal agency
Obama selects Jane Lubchenco, a renowned marine biologist, to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
FLORENCE – Jane Lubchenco, one of the world’s most prominent marine biologists, a staunch advocate of marine reserves and an Oregonian for three decades, will be introduced today as President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The huge agency oversees a wide range of operations, including how the United States deals with climate change, analyzes the weather, regulates commercial fishermen and responds to tsunamis.
Neither Lubchenco nor officials with Obama’s transition team could be reached for comment Thursday, but several of her colleagues confirmed that she was en route to Chicago for the announcement, and Jay Rasmussen, director of the Oregon Sea Grant program, announced the news via e-mail. The Sea Grant program is housed at Oregon State University, where Lubchenco is a professor, and is part of the agency she has been tapped to govern.
John Byrne, OSU’s former president who headed NOAA during the Reagan administration, said he learned the news from the college’s vice president of advancement. Byrne called his colleague a “major international science figure.”
“She fits in very well with the Obama philosophy of wanting to bring about change,” Byrne said, noting that Lubchenco is the first woman to be nominated to the post since the agency’s creation by executive order in 1970. “She’s a very intelligent person, very motivated towards maintaining the quality of our environment, to sustainability.”
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Lubchenco will oversee a $4 billion budget at NOAA, which represents about half of the U.S. Department of Commerce in terms of funding and personnel, Byrne said. The agency’s influence and importance is big, overseeing the National Weather Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and operating the country’s weather satellites with personnel stretching from Hawaii to Florida.
Lubchenco’s challenges will be lofty, tackling the government’s response to climate change, determining how to regulate the lucrative commercial and recreational fisheries that operate in federal waters and protecting U.S. oceans from degradation.
The role of NOAA in determining ocean policy is far greater than individual states’, because states have jurisdiction over the sea only from shore to three miles out. From there to 200 miles, the federal government is in charge.
One hotly contested issue that coastal fishermen will watch nervously, for example, involves marine reserves – sections of the ocean carved away from fishing and other uses. After a year of rigorous debate, an Oregon council recently recommended moving forward with two pilot projects for marine reserves here.
Lubchenco, who has spent years making the case for marine reserves and marine sanctuaries throughout the world as a representative of the Pew Oceans Commission, could make something happen on a federal level if she heads NOAA.
The Pew Commission in 2004 released a report that declared the country’s oceans in crisis, noting that coastal areas make up less than 10 percent of the nation’s land area but half the population lives there. By 2025, that number is expected to grow to 75 percent. One-third of fish populations that the government is responsible for managing are depleted, and 90 percent of the world’s large fish stocks – such as tuna, marlin, swordfish, cod and halibut – are gone.
The commission recommended the creation of a nationwide system of marine reserves and a Cabinet-level office of ocean policy that would function at the same level as agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior.
Lubchenco is known among some fishermen as “Calamity Jane” for the concerns she has stoked about climate change and its impacts on the ocean, but many fishermen in Oregon aren’t familiar with her.
“I hate to judge a book before I read it, but if you’re a real fan of marine reserves, marine protected areas, closing off areas of the ocean, you’re probably rejoicing in that selection, because she’s a real proponent, and quite frankly wrote the book on a lot of the marine reserves literature that is circulating now,” said Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. “Most people in the ocean user community are probably holding their breath as to what this means.”
Andy Rosenberg, a University of New Hampshire professor and fellow member of the Pew Oceans Commission, applauded Obama’s decision, calling it important to have someone so “intimately involved” in conservation science to run NOAA.
“(NOAA) has an important policy role with regard to protecting natural resources,” Rosenberg said, “everything from providing services to the public – like weather forecasting and climate modeling – to analysis of things like hurricanes, to the understanding of ocean resources.”
Lubchenco ResumÉ
Jane Lubchenco is Wayne and Gladys Valley professor of marine biology and distinguished professor of zoology at Oregon State University
Education: Ph.D, Harvard University, marine ecology
Experience: Heads interdisciplinary team of scientists who study marine ecosystem off Washington, Oregon and California: Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans; past appointee of President Clinton to National Science Board; former president, International Council for Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Ecological Society of America; co-chairwoman of Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s Advisory Group on Global Warming that recommended actions state should take to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions; Pew Oceans Commission and Joint Oceans Commission Initiative.
Awards: MacArthur Fellowship, Pew Fellowship, eight honorary degrees (including one from Princeton University), 2002 Heinz Award in the Environment, 2003 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest, 2004 Environmental Law Institute Award (the first scientist to receive this honor) and 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology
Source: Oregon State University

12/04/2008
floating headaches
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
BANDON – The Marie Ann Gail is 60 feet long, 51 tons and nearly a century old. She was piloted into Bandon in November 2004, crossing the bar sideways, so close to capsizing that you could see the propellers sticking out of the water at one point – or, as Port of Bandon General Manager Gina Dearth puts it, with “her screws spinning. She almost bought it coming in.”
At the time, the old groundfish “dragger” was the proud possession of Kim and Timothy Schafer, who’d bought the boat from a trawler in Blaine, Wash. The former owner had capitalized on a federal bailout of the West Coast fleet that meant his fishing permit would be eliminated and the Marie Ann Gail forbidden from commercial activity forever. The Schafers bought her for $20,000, hoping to make a houseboat and sail off into the sunset.
That’s not exactly how things turned out. And the saga of the Gail may find itself a story repeated along the coast in the coming years as the ripple effects of the economic downturn and increasing pressures on Oregon fishermen result in boat owners more willing to abandon a vessel than pay the money involved in keeping it afloat. The Legislature passed a bill in 2006 to increase boat registration fees to fund a program to help pay for the removal of abandoned vessels along the coast, and the money has helped officials dispose of four ships so far this year, including one in Florence and one in Newport.
The Schafers’ very arrival into Bandon was perilous enough that Dearth took pity on the couple and allowed them to moor the Gail in town through the winter, lest they drown trying to get the ship back out of port. Otherwise, the pair would have had a nightmare of a time getting back out to sea, and would then face few options for moorage at other ports, where officials would be wary due to the ship’s inability to make money and the likelihood that the Schafers wouldn’t be able to keep up with the moorage rent.
Before long, that’s exactly how things went in Bandon. The couple, who did not return a phone call from The Register-Guard on Wednesday, fell behind more than $3,000 in moorage fees. The sizeable boat spent three winters battering the port’s aging docks during storms, prompting officials to build a separate dock just for the Gail.
“They would say, `As soon as we sell some firewood and buy gas, we’ll get down there,’?” Dearth said. “That’s when I knew we were done.”
Dearth’s predecessor in the port job foreclosed on the boat and sold it to a buyer for $500, on one condition: that it be taken away. That didn’t happen. The boat was then sold to someone else for $100, and still it sat. The port held an auction. Nobody bid on the Gail.
Now, the old boat has no owner, which is why it’s the port’s problem. The Gail was moved to its new dock so that it would no longer block the view of the water, as it had in its original location. It doesn’t start, and even if it did, there are few skippers who’d be willing to drive it across the bar and nowhere to take it to a scrap yard. Occasionally, the local police will call Dearth in the middle of the night to report that the boat is taking on water – it leaks, and the automatic bilge pumps don’t work as they should.
To tow the Gail would cost $15,000, and then somebody would have to dismantle it.
“There she sits,” Dearth sighed, looking over its rusted net, splitting boards along the “rub rail” and disintegrating chains piled upon the deck. “We’d like to give it to somebody, anybody.”
A man from Molalla has taken interest in the craft in recent months and come to town on occasion to conduct repairs.
If that doesn’t work, Dearth may turn to the Oregon Marine Board, which administers the $75,000 annually in funds made available by the Legislature in 2006.
Abandoned boats pose a difficult dilemma for ports, which can’t just put them on a trailer and haul them to a dump. The costs for handling an abandoned boat can reach tens of thousands of dollars.
“In the past, some of the ports have hauled the boats on the beach and burned them,” said Randy Henry, operations policy analyst with the marine board. “They’ve accepted the fines that come with the improper disposal because that can be cheaper than disposing of them properly.”
The state offers a 75 percent to 25 percent match to local ports, and some cooperation on acquiring the necessary permits that it can take to deal with an abandoned ship. If it’s floating, a tow to shore can be relatively inexpensive. If sunken, the job can get pricey.
Holding the owners accountable is often impossible, Henry said.
“Very often, there’s an ownership dispute,” Henry said. “Somebody has this piece of paper that says they sold it to such and such, and another person claims they sold it to somebody else. In one case on Yaquina Bay, the owner had been identified and cited for abandoning a vessel, then later was arrested on drug charges, then missed his court date and couldn’t be found, so there’s a warrant out for his arrest. Vessels don’t end up abandoned because the owner is responsible and has money.”
Don Mann, general manager of the Port of Newport, said he hasn’t seen an increase in abandoned vessels of late.
“Right now, for the most part, the owners or lessees are paying their moorage,” he said. “But with the transition of this economy, I can’t predict yet what next year will be like.”
Reach Winston Ross at (541) 902-9030 or at winston.ross@registerguard.com.
12/04/2008
floating headaches
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
BANDON – The Marie Ann Gail is 60 feet long, 51 tons and nearly a century old. She was piloted into Bandon in November 2004, crossing the bar sideways, so close to capsizing that you could see the propellers sticking out of the water at one point – or, as Port of Bandon General Manager Gina Dearth puts it, with “her screws spinning. She almost bought it coming in.”
At the time, the old groundfish “dragger” was the proud possession of Kim and Timothy Schafer, who’d bought the boat from a trawler in Blaine, Wash. The former owner had capitalized on a federal bailout of the West Coast fleet that meant his fishing permit would be eliminated and the Marie Ann Gail forbidden from commercial activity forever. The Schafers bought her for $20,000, hoping to make a houseboat and sail off into the sunset.
That’s not exactly how things turned out. And the saga of the Gail may find itself a story repeated along the coast in the coming years as the ripple effects of the economic downturn and increasing pressures on Oregon fishermen result in boat owners more willing to abandon a vessel than pay the money involved in keeping it afloat. The Legislature passed a bill in 2006 to increase boat registration fees to fund a program to help pay for the removal of abandoned vessels along the coast, and the money has helped officials dispose of four ships so far this year, including one in Florence and one in Newport.
The Schafers’ very arrival into Bandon was perilous enough that Dearth took pity on the couple and allowed them to moor the Gail in town through the winter, lest they drown trying to get the ship back out of port. Otherwise, the pair would have had a nightmare of a time getting back out to sea, and would then face few options for moorage at other ports, where officials would be wary due to the ship’s inability to make money and the likelihood that the Schafers wouldn’t be able to keep up with the moorage rent.
Before long, that’s exactly how things went in Bandon. The couple, who did not return a phone call from The Register-Guard on Wednesday, fell behind more than $3,000 in moorage fees. The sizeable boat spent three winters battering the port’s aging docks during storms, prompting officials to build a separate dock just for the Gail.
“They would say, `As soon as we sell some firewood and buy gas, we’ll get down there,’?” Dearth said. “That’s when I knew we were done.”
Dearth’s predecessor in the port job foreclosed on the boat and sold it to a buyer for $500, on one condition: that it be taken away. That didn’t happen. The boat was then sold to someone else for $100, and still it sat. The port held an auction. Nobody bid on the Gail.
Now, the old boat has no owner, which is why it’s the port’s problem. The Gail was moved to its new dock so that it would no longer block the view of the water, as it had in its original location. It doesn’t start, and even if it did, there are few skippers who’d be willing to drive it across the bar and nowhere to take it to a scrap yard. Occasionally, the local police will call Dearth in the middle of the night to report that the boat is taking on water – it leaks, and the automatic bilge pumps don’t work as they should.
To tow the Gail would cost $15,000, and then somebody would have to dismantle it.
“There she sits,” Dearth sighed, looking over its rusted net, splitting boards along the “rub rail” and disintegrating chains piled upon the deck. “We’d like to give it to somebody, anybody.”
A man from Molalla has taken interest in the craft in recent months and come to town on occasion to conduct repairs.
If that doesn’t work, Dearth may turn to the Oregon Marine Board, which administers the $75,000 annually in funds made available by the Legislature in 2006.
Abandoned boats pose a difficult dilemma for ports, which can’t just put them on a trailer and haul them to a dump. The costs for handling an abandoned boat can reach tens of thousands of dollars.
“In the past, some of the ports have hauled the boats on the beach and burned them,” said Randy Henry, operations policy analyst with the marine board. “They’ve accepted the fines that come with the improper disposal because that can be cheaper than disposing of them properly.”
The state offers a 75 percent to 25 percent match to local ports, and some cooperation on acquiring the necessary permits that it can take to deal with an abandoned ship. If it’s floating, a tow to shore can be relatively inexpensive. If sunken, the job can get pricey.
Holding the owners accountable is often impossible, Henry said.
“Very often, there’s an ownership dispute,” Henry said. “Somebody has this piece of paper that says they sold it to such and such, and another person claims they sold it to somebody else. In one case on Yaquina Bay, the owner had been identified and cited for abandoning a vessel, then later was arrested on drug charges, then missed his court date and couldn’t be found, so there’s a warrant out for his arrest. Vessels don’t end up abandoned because the owner is responsible and has money.”
Don Mann, general manager of the Port of Newport, said he hasn’t seen an increase in abandoned vessels of late.
“Right now, for the most part, the owners or lessees are paying their moorage,” he said. “But with the transition of this economy, I can’t predict yet what next year will be like.”
Reach Winston Ross at (541) 902-9030 or at winston.ross@registerguard.com.