A Proclamation by the Budd Inlet Star Fleet

In recognition of invaluable service to the Star Fleet in Olympia including the following major contributions:

• • Bringing one design racing to Olympia.
• • Choosing a boat design with age and equipment limitations to control costs and thereby making the sport of sailboat racing open to all.
• • Traveling far and wide to acquire Stars and their equipment and returning them safely to the Olympia area for the use of others.
• • Constructing and equipping a large work shop on his property to refurbish boats in need of repair.
• • Rebuilding, repairing, painting and equipping said boats to a race ready condition.
• • Making his workshop and equipment available for others to repair their Stars.
• • Arranging for inexpensive moorage during the summer racing season at West Bay Marina.
• • Arranging for the use of a crane to transfer the boats onto the waters at West Bay Marina.
• • Providing the use of his runabout as race committee boat.
• • Continuing to assist in the ongoing maintenance and repair of boats damaged by the improper sailing technique of their wayward skippers.

Woman Rescued After Falling Off Dock

I’m Vickie, and I’m a liveaboard at Squalicum Marina in Bellingham, Washington. On a recent Sunday, a woman fell off the dock and she was in the water for 20 minutes! Somebody handed her a boat fender to keep her afloat! She could not get up on the dock. Physically, she could not pull herself out.

On almost every boat there is a Lifesling, however nobody thought to use one! Instead they just called 911 and the Coast Guard pulled her out! Maybe we all need lessons on using the LifeSling before somebody drowns! Applause to port workers and the Coast Guard for getting her out.

I think every Marina needs at least a tire or ladder on every finger. How many people could get up on the dock if they fell in especially if they were alone?

Thanks,
Vickie Barone
S/V OrcaSong
Bellingham, WA

Thank goodness there were people there to help her. We won’t get into why it took 20 minutes to get her out, but her accident once again raises the question of self-rescue on marina docks. Shilshole Marina is addressing the issue of what type of system to use and will be implementing it, hopefully, by the end of the year. This is an issue that is receiving more and more attention and Shilshole’s investigations should be shared and carefully considered by the other marinas. In the meantime, we all need to be reminded that when we’re on the docks, we’re on the water. Are we all going to start wearing life jackets as we probably should — I doubt it. If you’re by yourself, look around and figure how you’d get out if you fell in. Pay attention and be safe.

Central America Cruising Guide

It’s been a long time since I’ve written to you at 48° North. Over the past four years we’ve been to Alaska, around Vancouver Island, down the West Coast of the US, sailed about 4000 miles in Mexico and are now in Central America. We’ve had some serious ups and downs from beautiful spinnaker runs to hurricanes and fighting cancer. So far we’ve survived it all and we’re still moving along. We miss our friends in Seattle and Canada (Hi everyone!) and all those protected anchorages and hundreds of miles of swell-free coastline. However, we don’t miss the cold weather. There’s nothing like picking fruit right from the trees and swimming in warm water!

I want to take a little time to tell you about our Cruising Guide for the Pacific Coast of Central America. We just finished sailing the coast from Mexico down to the southern end of Nicaragua this season and are currently hauled out in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. Since there were no guide books covering this section of the coast, we decided to create one!

We have logged our entrance waypoints, anchor waypoints, and included information about the area which includes weather, current, official procedures, shopping, and sight seeing. We’ve also included information collected from other cruisers, sailing directions, pilot charts and satellite images. Since there is nothing in print for this part of Central America, I think your readers will find our on-line book extremely useful and inexpensive – especially if they have plans to head south!

You can buy it and download it directly off our website -- no waiting in foreign ports for your mail to arrive. We have some sample pages that you can view, and a brief description of the book on our website. Please take a look:
http://www.sailsarana.com/guide
If you want to see some of our adventures and follow Sarana, try our homepage http://www.sailsarana.com

Thanks,
Eric Baicy & Sherrell Watson
S/V Sarana

Sounds like a busy four years, we’re all envious. Okay, we don’t usually do blatant plugs, but in this case, what the heck. It’s certainly an area where many of the cruisers who left the Northwest this summer will wind up so this should help them plan their trip into those foreign countries. We’re getting lots of foreign reports now, as in the following:

Cruising News From Ecuador

When we visited Ecuador and its off-lying Islas Galápagos in 2006 we were enamored with the country, its culture and its people. We enthusiastically chose to return in 2007. In the interim period many changes have ?occurred - that may or may not be related to a change in government - which have made Ecuador difficult and much more expensive for cruisers.

The most onerous change has been the recent order by the Admiral of the Navy that mandates that yachts are to be incorporated into a computer tracking system—Sistema de Información de Tráfico Marítimo (SITRAME)—that was designed for commercial vessels. (If you are interested in a description of the Ecuadorian system, in English, we have downloaded it to our website: www.sv-carina.org. Select “Our Resources” and scroll down to Ecuador and select SITRAME to download a file in pdf format) If the system’s mandates are followed to the letter, then a sailing vessel is required to report EVERY deviation from it’s predicted rhumb line or waypoints to Ecuadorian authorities while in Ecuadorian waters. The area of jurisdiction: “will be applied in the maritime area of Ecuador responsibility, implicit toward the west until longitude 095 23 00 W, among the latitudes 01° 28’ 54” N and 03° 23’ 33.96” S; and, 200 NM around the Galápagos Islands…” The managing Ecuadorian authority is called DIGMER, an acronym for Dirección General de la Marina Mercante y del Litoral (www.digmer.org/portal), And, though the information forms are available on the internet and may be emailed to the authorities in Guayaquil, the net effect for cruisers, at this point in time, is that it has been dictated that an agent must be employed in order to process an entrada and salida (entry and exit) for a yacht for EVERY PORT visited in Ecuador. The agent fees we have knowledge of range from $150 to $200.

We entered Ecuador and were given an entrada before these changes went into effect but we will still have to pay $200 for an agent to process our zarpe from La Libertad. (Our agent: Roque Proaño Párraga, Naviera “J.C.P. Hnos.” Cia. Ltda, La Libertad. Tel. +593-4278-3931, Fax +593-4278-5317, email: navlibertjcp@hotmail.com or navieralibertad@grupojcp.com. This agency also has offices in Guayaquil and Manta.) To obtain a zarpe, we must report our outbound rhumb line and the predicted date, time and position (latitude/longitude) when we will exit Ecuadorian waters. Alternatively, if we wished to move our vessel from Salinas up the coast into Bahía de Caráquez, we would require a domestic zarpe from Salinas ($200 in agent fees still apply) and then a new agent would take over to process our entrada (and later salida) from Bahía de Caráquez and we would be charged an agent’s fee once AGAIN.

Previously, international or domestic entradas and zarpes for yachts were handled directly by the Capitania del Puerto and the fees were reasonable—that is, on a par with other countries we’ve visited. These new agent fees, which are IN ADDITION TO all of the fees paid previously, make cruising amongst Ecuador’s anchorages and ports outrageously expensive and, as we see it, will virtually eliminate Ecuador as a cruising ground for private yachts.

To exacerbate this situation, Ecuador now has a law that extrajeros (foreigners) cannot buy fuel at subsidized prices. The law is directed at reducing the cost of the subsidies and preventing low cost fuel from illegally crossing borders into neighboring countries where it can be sold at a higher price. Unfortunately, there are no outlets or any mechanism that enables fuel to be sold at extrajero rates.

Previously, Puerto Lucia Yacht Club in La Libertad (PLYC) sold gasoline and diesel but they have eliminated this service. In addition, when we recently attempted to leave the PLYC premises with jerry jugs—and a local man—to try to purchase about 40 gallons of diesel and 5 gallons of gasoline for our passage to Costa Rica, guardia at the gate attempted to stop us from LEAVING the club and told us we could not buy fuel or bring it into the yacht club.

Even though we thought we had a good relationship with the supervisor of the guardia who was then on duty, when we questioned him as to how we would be able to buy fuel to leave the country, he first shrugged and then suggested we visit the Capitania del Puerto in Salinas to obtain written permission to buy fuel. After a 45 minute wait at the Port Captain’s office, the Capitania himself took our question and was surprised we had been sent to his office. He sent us BACK to La Libertad, this time to the Minister of Energy, who, to his credit, was able, eventually, to help us. He explained the law that diesel fuel (as an example) is subsidized and available to nationals at $1.04/gal., but the price for extrajeros was $2.50/gal. The cost for gasoline was higher. To this, we said “Bueno: donde compramos este para $2.50/gal.? (Good; where do we buy this [fuel] for $2.50?)”. He let out a large sigh and said nothing for a few seconds. He then instructed us to go to a local service station where our jerry jugs were filled with diesel and gasoline and purchased (at the national price) in the name of an Ecuadorian local we had hired. The minister met us at the service station and stamped our facturas (invoices) with an official Ministero de Energia stamp and then signed the document. When we returned to PLYC with our fuel, the guardia at the club stopped us coming back into the gate, checked and then confiscated our facturas, which were the only proof we had that we were not breaking the law. After meeting the next day with the PLYC manager we were able to repossess our facturas. As a side note: reports from the Manta Yacht Club and Bahía de Caraquez indicate that, at least at the time of this writing, fuel can still be obtained at prices above pump prices but below the extrajero rates.

Propane is also subsidized in Ecuador. Recently the country’s supply chain was interrupted by protests and a brief embargo ensued. PLYC employees have also been instructed, by memo, not to help cruisers obtain propane. We have now been assured by Galo Ortiz, manager of PLYC, that PLYC employees will once again facilitate the purchase of propane for cruisers though we cannot be sure this is the case since the situation seems to change daily and we hear conflicting reports.

PLYC has also made other changes. In addition to a reduction in services offered, fees have continuously been increasing. An additional fee, recently initiated, is a “live aboard” fee of $200 per month for all vessels in the yard or med-moored. For our vessel the increased fee would amount to roughly a 50% increase in monthly fee. What follows is what PLYC charges (as per price increase in mid-July 2007, add 12% for IVA tax) for a typical 44’ cruising boat:

• Monthly Fee (Med-moor or in yard; slips are roughly double this rate): $484 (1st three months), $460 (4th), $436 (5th), $387 (6th month and beyond)
• Live Aboard Fee (in addition to Monthly Fee): $200
• Electricity: $0.25/kwh
• Water: $3/m3
• Travelift, round trip: $377
• Re-Blocking (using Travelift): $180

Outraged at New Mooring Charges

I’m writing to draw attention to and express my outrage and frustration over Shilshole Bay Marina’s new policy of meauring boat length.

As noted in earlier letters, the marina (maybe others, too?) now counts bow pulpits and other things in measuring length. My boat is officially documented at under 30 feet, but the marina measured it as 31.6 feet. If that were not bad enough, they have not included 32 foot slips in their rebuilding plans. This means I’ll have to accept a 34 foot slip, amounting to an instant increase of $50 a month/$600 a year in moorage. This is no trivial sum. Moorage at Shilshole, since it has been tied to the market has been creeping up steadily anyway. This places an additional undo financial burden on many boat owners. My family already splits the moorage fee three ways just to make it affordable.

This new policy undertaken by the marina is yet more evidence of their callous disregard for tenants, their arrogance, and their secrecy. (There was no adequate opportunity for public input on this new approach). I hope tenants of Shilshole can join in some kind of collective action against the marina’s policies and operations. If there is not already a tenant’s association or advocacy group, there certainly needs to be one now. Thanks for your attention.

Regards,
Vincent G. Barnes

You are not alone. Many boaters have been hit with an increase because of the new slip length rules, mostly in the 30-40 foot range. A few had their charges go down but, on the whole, Shilshole will make more money for the port.

One of the problems is that they now figure overall length to include everything, bow to stern, including bowsprits, davits, whatever. Now, you must be able to fit your boat, all your boat and everything on it, into a certain length. While I don’t like the new rates anymore than you do, I do appreciate not having to dodge bowsprits and anchors while walking the docks.