Filed at January 14, 2008 under On the Water/Boating and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Key West by Keys
International fleet competes for world, More than 260 sailboats and sailing crews from around the world are to compete in the waters off Key West during Acura Key West 2008, one of the most prestigious sailing regattas on the international calendar.
The racing challenge is scheduled Jan. 21 to 25.
In its 21st year, Acura Key West 2008, presented by Nautica, is to feature national and international greats from the yachting world. Sailors are expected to hail from at least 20 countries and more than 30 American states.
“We’re pleased to be seeing a really great fleet come together,” event organizer Peter Craig said. “From custom IRC programs and established one-design classes to [Performance Handicap Racing Fleet National Championship] boats seeking the 2008 national championship, it’s going to be an exciting week.” According to regatta organizers, Acura Key West’s primary attractions for race teams include the high level of competition and the opportunity for January sailing in warm subtropical waters.
Competitors are to race on four courses set over a 10-mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean just off Key West’s shore and inside North America’s only living coral barrier reef, which parallels the Florida Keys. The racing action is slated to begin at 10:30 a.m. daily. Read more »
Filed at January 12, 2008 under Commercial Fishing and On the Water/Fishing and Florida Keys and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Key West and Animals/Fish/Lobster by Keys
The Keys celebrate the bounty of the sea — Florida lobster, yellowtail, sweet pink shrimp, grouper, stone crab claws and more — during the third annual Florida Keys Seafood Festival from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Jan. 19. The event, at Key West’s Bayview Park at Truman Avenue and Eisenhower Drive, features music and children’s activities as well as such specialties as conch chowder and conch fritters. All the seafood available for purchase will be prepared by fishermen and their families. Admission is free. Proceeds benefit the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association and scholarships for college-bound children of commercial fishermen. Call 800-527-8539.
Filed at January 10, 2008 under Environment and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Key West by Keys
Smathers Beach will soon have 11,600 tons of fresh sand for locals and tourists to enjoy with financial assistance from the city of Key West and the Florida Department or Environmental Protection. The city has available $1.32 million approved by the state for Key West beach renourishment projects; $880,000 of that will be used for Smathers. That cost will be split between DEP and the city, each paying $440,000. That leaves the city $420,000 to spend on other beaches: C.B. Harvey Rest Beach near the White Street Pier is possibly the next project, city Engineering Director Roland Flowers said.
Despite Commissioner Dan Kolhage expressing dissatisfaction with the cost of the project, the rest of the commission gave the go-ahead when it met in regular session Wednesday. Commissioner Clayton Lopez pointed out that Thursday was the deadline to approve the contract, otherwise the state money “may not be available in the future,” city documents read.
Consulting firm G.M. Selby has been subcontracted for design, permitting and construction phases of the project, while E.R. Jahna will deliver the sand and Charlie Toppino and Sons will contour and grade the sand all within the year. Besides aesthetic benefits, the Engineering Department said such projects increase the likelihood of receiving post-disaster funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Kolhage doesn’t want the city to pay nearly a half a million dollars for the planning and designing phase of the Smathers project. “I’d want to see more spent on the sand and not the placement of the sand,” he said. Flowers told the commission the state says the design phase is necessary given the sensitive nature of sea grass, adding that particulars like grain size and color are scrutinized by DEP. “We are getting taken for a ride,” Kolhage said. “This is absolutely ridiculous.”
More Florida Keys Beaches.
Filed at January 5, 2008 under Environment and Florida Keys/Lower Keys by Keys
Wetlands damage apparent as crews remove casino boat
The jinxed life of the ill-named Lady Luck casino boat should come to an end within weeks. Work has started on cutting the metal hull of the 80-foot vessel into pieces to be carted away. The Lady Luck has spent more than two years sitting high and dry on a gulfside flat off mile marker 13. You can’t miss it looking bayside as you drive U.S. 1.
“It’s a very complicated project because of the location but at Day 8 of the mobilization, we’re exactly where we planned to be,” John Coffin, owner of Coffin Marine of Big Pine Key, said Friday. It’s always kind of a shock when that happens,” he laughed, “but it is going well. The devil is in the details, but barring weather or mechanical problems or some kind of accident, we should stay on schedule.”
The Lady Luck was grounded in Florida Bay by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but freed. Then Hurricane Wilma hit that October - shoving the vessel onto a shallow grass flat where it has remained since, becoming an environmental hazard, eyesore and nuisance.
The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary tapped its shipwreck fund to pay for the $500,000 removal. Normally we don’t have to deal with a vessel this size,” sanctuary Superintendent Dave Score said. “We’re hoping it comes in under budget.” Typically owners of large vessels that go hard aground in the federally protected sanctuary pay for the salvage operation and environmental restoration. Read more »
Filed at December 31, 2007 under Commercial Fishing and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Key West by Keys
It was 1923 and, in a two day period at the end of December, Key West fishermen brought in 106,000 pounds of kingfish, which was selling for 8 cents a pound wholesale.
Filed at December 30, 2007 under On the Water/Boating and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Key West by Keys
By Capt. Tom Serio
Because government officials and others involved with the recovery of S/Y Legacy have not been forthcoming with her progress, I flew over Legacy in late November to find out her status. She is still in the marine sanctuary just north of Key West, where she was deposited by Hurricane Wilma two years ago, a few dozen yards from Bluefish Channel. The latest recovery process of pulling her out the way she went in has freed her from the bottom and continues. Originally speculated in early September to take three weeks, pulling Legacy to deep water has so far taken three months, with probably several more to go.
This current recovery process (others have been tried but failed) includes creating a channel in front of Legacy by removing the sandy bottom using an auger and pump. The sand is then relocated aft as the yacht moves forward. A series of cables connected to her hull run along the initial path of entry cut in the sea grass (almost a mile long), out to a utility boat, the Helen B. Legacy is pulled several feet at a time by the utility vessel. Miami-based Byrd Commercial Diving is the marine salvage contractor on site. The flotilla of houseboats rafted nearby allows Legacy’s owner and crew to remain close by and keep watch over the recovery.
So instead of official reports on what is happening, we have photos, which indeed speak a thousand words. [To see more, visit http://www.the-triton.com.] Although Legacy appeared to have moved about 1,200 feet by late November, there appears to be at least that much farther still to go. As she inches closer to the edge of the flats, hopefully the water will get deeper and aid in her refloating.
The sand deposits pumped from in front of Legacy appear to be well scattered in the area aft, appearing to create a sandy island. With the concerns of the impact on the local ecosystem, this process appears to be disturbing a large area. Due to sustained wind and/or current conditions, there is a large sand plume leaching out of the yellow containment boom. It was good to see Legacy headed toward freedom, but there will be many questions as to the process and long-term effect on the area. Let’s hope the marine sanctuary as well as Legacy will one day be restored to pre-Wilma condition.
Filed at December 25, 2007 under Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Key West by Keys
Since holding its first Mass in 1846, the church of Saint Mary Star of the Sea has been helping people in the far outpost of the Lower Keys. Its nuns treated patients with yellow fever in the 1870s, victims of the USS Maine explosion in Havana Harbor in 1898 and the needy during Key West’s bankruptcy of the 1960s, according to the Reverend Deacon Peter Batty. ”Needs change,” Batty said. “We have been very vigilant serving current needs. God wants us to be flexible. We’re Gumby saints.”
The crisis causing today’s need for many living in the Lower Keys: skyrocketing housing costs. Saint Mary Star of the Sea has created the area’s first Out-Reach Mission. The idea was conceived seven years ago but took five years to become reality. Initial funding has come from the Klaus-Murphy Foundation, which is paying for the first three years of rent and utilities for the mission.
With mostly volunteer help, the church converted an old rundown tire store on Stock Island into a homey place for people of all denominations and levels of need to get food, baby clothes, help finding government services, a friendly smile. And hope. Last month, the mission served an average of 552 people per week. The number has been growing as word continues to get out about the caring place that opened in August 2006. ”This means a lot,” Samuel Kelly, father of a 13-year-old boy and 58-year resident of Key West, said last week as he carried two bags of donated groceries. “It helps me to have food in the house. I’m handicapped…. I can’t work.” Read more »
Filed at December 14, 2007 under Animals and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Big Pine Key and Environment by Keys
In a letter to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), The Humane Society of the United States asks the federal agency to immediately halt a trapping program in the Florida Keys because it is needlessly killing raccoons and other native wildlife species. Local residents and wildlife advocates have expressed outrage over the senseless trapping of native wildlife. In its letter to USFWS Southeast Director Sam Hamilton, The HSUS points out that the Fish and Wildlife Service may be violating federal law by carrying out this reckless and indiscriminate killing campaign.
Last March, the USFWS hired USDA Wildlife Services to humanely trap feral and free-roaming cats and bring them to animal shelters, which then would place them in colonies or return them to their owners. The stated goal of the program is to reduce predation upon the endangered marsh rabbit. However, instead of removing cats, it turns out that Wildlife Services has been trapping and killing large numbers of raccoons and other wildlife under a program which costs taxpayers $50,000. “The irony is that the main species they are trying to protect – the Lower Keys marsh rabbit – is rarely preyed upon by raccoons,” explains Laura Simon, field director of urban wildlife for The HSUS. “The federal government is killing dozens of raccoons and other species indiscriminately, for no good reason, and taxpayers are footing the bill.” Read more »
Filed at December 7, 2007 under Animals and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Big Pine Key by Keys
A convicted alligator killer has violated his probation by drinking alcohol and taking opiates while on work release from the Monroe County Detention Center this week, authorities said Thursday.
Jordan Milo, 21, of Big Pine Key, was returning to jail after a day’s work at a construction site Tuesday when corrections officers suspected he was under the influence of some substance. A urine test and three Breathalyzer tests showed opiates and blood-alcohol levels of 0.11, 0.12, and 0.13, according to sheriff’s spokeswoman Becky Herrin and Assistant State Attorney Val Winter, who prosecuted the case. Milo could have his probation reinstated or be sentenced to serve five years in prison, the maximum he could have received for poaching the alligator in the Blue Hole wildlife preserve last year. He also risks losing the chance to have the felony charge expunged from his criminal record, one of the terms of his probation.
“The judge could do anything,” Winter said.
An arraignment has been scheduled for 8:45 a.m. Thursday at the Monroe County courthouse on Whitehead Street. Milo either can admit violating his probation or deny it and request a hearing. His attorney, Nathan Eden, did not return The Citizen’s calls for comment Thursday. Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Office has revoked Milo’s work-release privilege, Herrin said. Work-release inmates have more freedom than the general population, but they also are monitored more closely, she said. “They ride a bike to work and we know how long it takes to get there and back, and the employers are given a session on how to supervise the inmates,” she said, “but these things happen and we catch them when they do.”
Milo and his accomplice, 19-year-old Marathon resident Timothy Goll, began serving a six-month jail term in September, to be followed by five years on probation. Judge Mark Jones ordered them to complete eight hours of public service a month, half of which must be for environmental causes, during the first three years of their probation. The judge also ordered both receive psychological evaluations and the appropriate treatment, and banned them from the Blue Hole wildlife preserve. Both pleaded guilty in June to third-degree felony charges for blinding and bludgeoning to death a 6-foot female alligator they then ate at a backyard barbecue in March, photos of which they posted on www.myspace.com.
Filed at September 8, 2007 under Animals and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Big Pine Key by Keys
The two young men who killed Cola the alligator with a high-powered pellet gun and souvenir baseball bat, ate her at a barbecue and gloated with pictures on MySpace.com are going to jail. ”They picked the wrong gator to kill,” Gordon Sharp, the arresting officer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said Friday during the impassioned five-hour sentencing hearing.
Cola lived with its mate Bacardi at the Blue Hole, an abandoned rock quarry turned pond on a federal refuge on Big Pine Key. She was visited yearly by thousands, and described as “semi-tame.”
Circuit Judge Mark H. Jones, saying he rarely has seen a case with as much public interest, sentenced Jordan Milo, 20, and Timothy Goll, 19, to six months at the Monroe County Detention Center, five years’ probation, community service and a psychological evaluation. Before being led away in handcuffs, Milo, a sergeant in the 194th Army Reserve unit with orders to go to Iraq, blurted: “I will be dishonorably discharged.” That prompted an angry Jones to tell Milo: “You still don’t get it.” Read more »
International fleet competes for world, More than 260 sailboats and sailing crews from around the world are to compete in the waters off Key West during Acura Key West 2008, one of the most prestigious sailing regattas on the international calendar.
