Sportfishing Industry Starts Petition Calling for Changes to CARB’s Proposed Engine Regulation
By LINDSEY GLASGOW, the Log, June 24, 2021
SACRAMENTO— The California Air Resources Board has proposed new regulations that would require the harbor craft sector to upgrade diesel engines with newer, cleaner technologies starting in 2023 in a phased-in approach based on the engine’s age and current engine type.
The Sportfishing Association of California and a coalition of sportfishing landings, sportfishing charters, and other supporters, have started an online petition calling on Governor Gavin Newsom to move commercial passenger fishing vessels back under the commercial fishing vessel sector, which under the proposed rule will have less stringent requirements.
The petition so far has garnered about 2,000 signatures, according to SAC Executive Director Ken Franke.
“The rulemaking will simply make it to where we cannot comply and what CARB says is if you can’t comply, retire the vessel,” said Frank Ursitti, a managing partner of H&M Landing in San Diego, which has a fleet of 32 vessels, all independently owned and operated.
The new regulations were released in April and are aimed at attaining regional air quality standards and reducing community health risk, according to CARB.
Under the proposed regulations, all harbor craft, except commercial fishing vessels, would be required to upgrade to a U.S. EPA certified marine tier 3 or tier 4 engine plus a diesel particulate filter between 2023 and 2030. The DPF is meant to modify engines to meet CARB performance standards.
Any vessel with tier 0 or tier 1 engines would need to make the modifications between 2023 and 2025, and any vessel with a tier 2 or later engine would need to make the changes between 2026 and 2030. The rules do provide some exceptions, including engines operated within state waters 80 to 700 hours a year.
The draft proposal requires the commercial fishing sector upgrade to tier 2 or newer engines between 2030 and 2032. CARB staff said in an email one factor for proposing less stringent emission requirements for commercial fishing vessels in the industry has less of an ability to pass costs onto the consumer than other categories that are able to establish prices for their services.
A 2019 Cal Maritime study that evaluated the feasibility and costs of installing tier 4 engines concluded tier 4 engines do not exist for commercial fishing or commercial passenger fishing vessels. The study also said retrofit with a DPF and/or diesel engine fluid system would have adverse effects on vessel stability and would reduce passenger count by eight to 30 persons. The retrofit would also need to get U.S. Coast Guard approval for safety.
Ursitti said they have already begun discussing how this proposed regulation would impact the cost of tickets if these vessels were to retrofit with a tier 3 engine and DPF.
“For an entry-level ticket price, raise that ticket price right out of the gate in excess of 25 percent,” said Ursitti.
He said to completely replace a vessel, they would need to increase ticket prices by 60 to 70 percent.
“So again, you just run yourself right out of business,” said Ursitti.
The CARB board is scheduled to vote on this proposed regulation at a public hearing set for Nov. 18 and 19, after a 45-day comment period that will start on Oct. 1.
CARB staff said they are continuing to consider stakeholder feedback and are working to balance economic impacts with the need to achieve greater public health protections by improving air quality.
According to SAC, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, recreational fishing contributed $5.6 billion a year in economic activity and supported nearly 40,000 jobs.
Franke said while most harbor crafts are owned by big corporations or port authorities, sportfishing and whale watching boats are family-owned businesses that operate on a small profit margin. He said these regulations would put many of them out of business in three to six years, it would substantially increase the price of passenger tickets, and limit access to saltwater fishing, whale watching, and children’s science trips.
“In my time here at SAC this is the most serious issue we have ever faced,” said Franke.
He also noted the proposed regulations were not developed in consultation with the USCG, which is charged with regulating the safety of commercial passenger vessels.
“It’s not that they don’t want the rule, it’s that it should be such that people can actually comply,” said Franke.
Those in the industry say they have already been proactively and voluntarily upgrading their engines to tier 2 and tier 3 over the past 15 to 20 years as the technology becomes available with the help of funds from the Carl Moyer Program, which is a voluntary grant program that provides funding to accelerate the replacement of older diesel engines with cleaner technologies. Franke estimated most of the commercial passenger fishing vessels in the state currently have tier 2 engines.
“Our fleet’s been very responsible and very proactive utilizing funds to up-tier and reduce emissions,” said Ursitti.
Ursitti, who has previously owned multiple sportfishing charter vessels, said he himself has used the Carl Moyer Program for three repowers.
“Our industry, the CPFV [commercial passenger fishing vessels], has a vested interest, just like every commercial fisherman has a vested interest, in creating and maintaining a sustainable environment, without resource available we’re out of business,” said Ursitti.
There was also concern that once these deadlines are mandated, grant funds would not be available.
“If this rule goes through there’s a real serious question as to whether or not they’ll ever be able to have grant money pay for a portion of these engines or not,” said Franke.
Ursitti questioned if there was data to show how much of an impact commercial passenger fishing vessels emissions had on air quality and how much of an impact upgrading to tier 4 engines would have.
“I think the hard questions need to be asked,” said Ursitti.
According to CARB, there are about 352 commercial passenger fishing vessels statewide and a total of 3,153 harbor craft vessels encompassed by these regulations.
CARB staff said they are finalizing emissions, air quality, economic, and health benefits analyses and those will be part of the rulemaking package anticipated for public release in September 2021.
“We hope the Newsom administration sees this as a priority in rebuilding tourism and also continuing to make the ocean accessible to diverse and lower economic communities, we want to be willing partners, this fleet has a long history of working well with the state and it’s an economic engine to the entire coast that we hate to see ruined,” said Franke.
The petition can be found at savefishing.com and resources about the proposed regulations can be found at ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/commercial-harbor-craft.
First of its Kind Study Estimates Economic Impact of Diving Sector in Mexico
By LINDSEY GLASGOW, The Log, June 3, 2021
LA JOLLA— In a first-of-its-kind study, a team of researchers have found the diving sector in Mexico generates gross revenues of approximately $725.16 million annually, an economic impact on par with the fishing industry.
The results of the research were published in a paper in the April 2021 edition of Marine Policy.
“Despite the number and popularity of diving destinations in Mexico, no study has previously estimated the economic importance of this industry for the Mexican case,” wrote the authors in the paper.
The team used Google searches to pull information about dive sites and dive shops, using verified results from tourism and diving operators’ websites, websites for diving-related magazines, peer-reviewed scientific publications, and gray literature in their study.
They then traveled all around Mexico conducting surveys, gathering data on revenues, operation costs, how many customers operators have every week and the prices they charge. They then calculated estimated diving operators’ revenues per region based on the number of diving operators, the average number of clients per year, and the average price of one trip.
The resulting outcome was a database of 264 diving operators and 860 diving sites, of which 51.51 percent were found to be located inside protected natural areas, 6.74 percent within a no-take zone, and 41.74 percent outside of protected areas.
Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, the senior author of the paper and associate professor in the Marine Biology Research Division at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, said one of the big findings of the paper is that the diving industry has a similar economic impact as the fishing industry, another major industry that relies on the ocean. The paper cited findings that gross revenues of the Mexican artisanal and industrial fisheries were $700 million in 2019 (Martinez Estrada et al).
Aburto-Oropeza said he hopes this research starts new conversations about how to strike more of a balance between extraction activities, such as fishing, and non-extraction activities, such as diving.
“We are generating a lot of money without extracting all these resources and in the case of diving, a fish or a shark can be seen or can used multiple times, infinitive times compared to other sectors like fishing,” said Aburto-Oropeza.
He said unlike other industries, the diving sector has largely not organized together to influence public policy. According to the study, there is also no public policy that encourages diving activities – aid in starting the business, tax cuts, bonuses for environmentally friendly activities, ect. – or stimulates them to be sustainable and aid in the protection of the marine environment.
“In the big scale they don’t have a strong political voice and that is because they are not organized as an economic sector,” said Aburto-Oropeza.
Aburto-Oropeza emphasized he didn’t believe it should be fishing versus diving, but that there should be conversations about other economical benefits of the ocean and ways the sectors could work together on a collaborative vision that results in higher earnings for both while reducing pressure on marine biodiversity.
The study found the small-scale diving business model, which makes up 90.65 percent of Mexico’s diving industry, if sustainably managed and regulated, represents an opportunity to spread ecotourism across coastal ecosystems in Mexico and, coupled with a focus on scuba diving, generates more net revenues for the operators. In contrast, in general, large-scale tourism causes cascading ecological problems and leads to overuse, and degradation, of natural ecosystems, which can result in a lower ecotourism potential over time, according to the study. The study found the diving industry generates gross revenues of $455.94 million annually when the large-scale businesses are excluded.
“Especially because their assets for their businesses are the reefs that they use to bring all this tourism and if these reefs or if these marine populations are impacted or in a very bad shape the hypothesis is that that business or the revenues of that business will decrease,” said Aburto-Oropeza.
Aburto-Oropeza said he hopes this study will encourage more divers and diving shops owners to get involved in public policy that aids in the protection of these reefs and ocean.
“Scientists working with society to solve problems, especially problems about sustainability and sustainable development goals, this study intends to be part of this proactiveness or this pro-action that scientists also need to do to solve this problem,” said Aburto-Oropeza.
Aburto-Oropeza said they are continuing this work, conducting a new study about ways to protect these diving sites and to establish collaboration with other sectors including the fishing sector.
Co-authors of the study were Ramiro Arcos-Aguilar, Fabio Favoretto, and Victoria Jiménez-Esquivel of Centro para biodiversidad Marina y la Conservación, Joy Kumagai of Scripps Oceanography, and Adán Martinez-Cruz of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The Oceans 5 Foundation, the Wyss Foundation, USA, and the National Geographic Society supported the research.
Ocean Fathoms Ages Wine in Nature’s Perfect Cellar: on the Ocean Floor in Santa Barbara Channel
By LINDSEY GLASGOW, the Log, May 24, 2021
SANTA BARBARA— It started with a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea that left 168 bottles of French champagne at the bottom of the ocean for 170 years. The sunken trade schooner was discovered off the coast of Finland in 2010 and scattered amongst the wreckage 160-feet below the surface, were the bottles of bubbly. The tops were popped and experts who tasted the contents said the champagne preserved its taste even after decades thanks to near-perfect wine aging conditions found at the bottom of the Baltic Sea – a stable temperature of 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit, relatively low salinity, low levels of light, and high pressure.
The discovery inspired and gave rise to a unique and uncommon wine aging method that uses the seafloor as cellar. After the shipwreck was discovered, several wineries, including Veuve Clicquot, began small experiments with aging wine in the ocean to see how the wine compares to the same wines aged in cellars.
After trying and failing to get his hands on an ocean-aged wine, Emanuele Azzeretto, who grew up in Italy making wine with his family, decided to make his own, marking the beginning of Ocean Fathoms.
“I’ve been a diver since I was a little kid so I wanted to drink some. Tried to buy it, tried to look for it, nobody could get it, they couldn’t give it to me,” said Azzeretto. “…So that’s how it started, because no one wanted to sell it to me.”
Santa Barbara-based Ocean Fathoms is a producer of ocean-aged wine, producing several proprietary blends of their own as well as collaborating with wineries around the world to age other wines with their unique process. All the wines are lowered to the ocean floor just about a mile from Santa Barbara Harbor for 12 months before being brought up and enjoyed.
“Perfect temperature, no light, no oxygen down there, there’s no sound and in a normal cellar you have to have someone who walks around and turns the bottles or turns the barrels and it’s not consistent, well the ocean current is constantly, slowly moving the juice inside the bottles, so you take all those factors together and it’s the absolute perfect environment to age wine,” said Ocean Fathoms Co-Founder Todd Hahn.
Hahn said they are one of about eight producers doing this sort of thing worldwide. Ocean Fathoms is finalizing a permit with the Federal Drug Administration and once that is complete, they plan to start selling their wine directly to consumers through their website as well as in upscale seafood restaurants and resorts.
Azzeretto began experimenting with the concept in 2016, spending the first years perfecting the technique and technology, which included developing a patent for the cages that drop and hold the wine while they’re underwater.
Hahn joined the operation about a year later after one of the barnacle-covered bottles caught the eye of a mutual friend at a charity event who shared the find.
“The following weekend I drove up to Santa Barbara, met Emanuel and tasted the wine, saw the bottles and was just blown away,” said Hahn.
While Hahn and Azzeretto both had an affinity for drinking wine, neither were experts in the field and they wanted to bring on someone who could give the brand clout in the wine space and prove it wasn’t a gimmick.
Hahn was able to get a meeting with Jordane Andrieu, who owns Heritage Fine Wines in Beverly Hills and a biodynamic wine estate in Burgundy, France.
“It was very clear he thought our idea was a gimmick,” said Hahn.
But after tasting the wines, Hahn said Andrieu was on board.
“He ends up tasting after about an hour, he looks down, he looks back up, he’s like I didn’t want to like this, I did not want to like this, and his demeanor went a 180,” said Hahn. “…He gave us a lot of credibility in the wine space.”
Ocean Fathoms also brought on another well-respected figure in the wine space, sommelier and wine maker Rajat Parr.
“I let the experts do the judging or how many years, what’s better or not, for me, it definitely takes the wine on a different path,” said Azzeretto.
That path even differs year to year and can be seen on the outsides of the bottles where barnacle, coral and seashell growth vary based on the year.
“Every single time we pulled up the cages, that almost becomes a vintage, like this is an El Niño year, this is the year of the fires, and oh this next year it was really wet, so it’s pretty interesting whatever happens on the environment on the outside has a different effect on what those bottles look like,” said Hahn.
Hahn said giving back to the ocean is something they also wanted to do. He said they give 1 percent of everything they sell to Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute and give away bottles for charity events for organizations related to protecting the ocean.
“I get to dive, I get to drink good wines, I get to do what I love doing, so what better work than to do what you love doing,” said Azzeretto.
New civilian boating channel opens in Anaheim Bay
BY LINDSEY GLASGOW, the Log, Jan. 21, 2021
SEAL BEACH—Boaters navigating between the ocean and Huntington Harbour have a new route to follow, which will separate them from Naval vessel traffic and provide a more direct route. The Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach opened a new small craft channel in Anaheim Bay on Jan. 21. The new channel separates Navy traffic from civilian boat traffic. The old channel previously shared by the two is now closed to the public but work on armoring the sides of the new channel will continue for several more months.
Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach Public Affairs Officer Gregg Smith said the new small craft channel will allow civilian vessels transiting between the ocean and Huntington Harbour to do so in a safer and more efficient route.
“There’s been a longstanding concern on part of the Navy that it’s not optimal to have civilian small boats transiting right next to a location where Navy ships are operating,” Smith said.
The new channel is approximately 1,200 feet long and 200 feet wide, making it approximately 25% wider than the old channel. Smith said the new channel will also result less time boaters are restricted from using the entrance. The bay has been closed off to boaters anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple hours any time a navy ship came into or out of port.
“With the new channel in place we should eventually be able to significantly cut back on the amount of time that the public channel is closed whenever ships are coming and going,” Smith said.
The Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach was working with the U.S. Coast Guard to get new navigation aids installed to guide boaters in the new channel. He said those were expected to be in place when the channel opened.
The civilian channel is one of the first phases of a larger five-year project, which began in December 2019. The project also includes the construction of a 1,100-foot-long replacement ammunition pier at the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, which will enable larger ships to safely enter Anaheim Bay for loading and unloading.
The navy’s ammunition wharf was first built in the 1940s and then rebuilt in the 1950s.
“It’s basically about to run out of its design life and so we have a need for a replacement ammunition pier,” Smith said.
Since Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach is the only naval weapons station within 1,000 miles of the fleet concentration in San Diego, the pier needed to remain operational during construction to continue supporting the fleet. A new ammunition wharf will be built closer to the center of the harbor.
“That will move ammunition operations further away from both civilian vessels as well as further away from Pacific Coast Highway, which increases safety and security both for the Navy and surrounding communities,” Smith said.
The new pier will be larger, built to the latest standards and have the ability to simultaneously dock two medium ships or one large ship.
The old channel will become part of the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach restricted area and is now serving as a construction zone for this next phase of the overall project.
“We wanted to ensure that civilian boats always had access to Huntington Harbour so we built the small craft channel first and then we’ll be doing other parts of the project in the coming months and years,” Smith said.
Southern California's Underwater World of Artificial Reefs
By LINDSEY GLASGOW, the Log, Feb. 7, 2020
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA—Bait, cast, wait, wait some more and sometimes, catch. That’s the fishing experience above the surface. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has long researched and implemented programs aimed at maintaining sportfishing success in the face of the cumulative effects of increasing fishing pressure as well as negative impacts on the near-shore ecosystem.
Artificial reefs came into the picture in the late 1950s, when CDFW instituted a study to see if things such as automobiles could be dropped in flat, sandy or muddy areas near the shore to imitate rocky coasts and reefs in order to draw more sport fish, such as kelp bass and sheephead, to provide recreational anglers with small boats better fishing closer to harbors.
PAST
In 1958 when the study began, little to no full-scale scientific evaluation of artificial reefs had been made, according to an article titled “Artificial Habitat in the Marine Environment,” which was published in CDFW’s Fish Bulletin 124 in 1963. CDFW was working off long-known information that greater numbers and kinds of fishes inhabited rocky coasts, reefs, and banks compared to smooth, unbroken sandy or muddy bottoms.
In May of 1958, 20 old car bodies were placed in 50 feet of water at Paradise Cove, not far from the Malibu shore. A few months later in September 1958, six wooden streetcars were placed in 60 feet of water approximately 1 mile offshore from the Redondo Beach-Palos Verdes coastline.
Divers, during a spread of years following May 1958, performed routine dives to observe and obtain information on kelp growth, numbers and species of fish and invertebrates and other observations. Over the course of 29 dives between May 1958 and November 1960 at the Paradise Cove reef, a high of 24,000 semi-resident fishes was counted, with the average being around 4,200, according to the “Artificial Habitat in the Marine Environment” article. In October 1958, the first naturally seeded young giant kelp plants were discovered and by Jan. 1959 some had grown to 2 feet.
According to the findings published in the “Artificial Habitat in the Marine Environment” article, various perch species made up the greatest number of fishes on the reef, accounting for 74.5 percent of the total, followed by kelp and sand bass, señorita, rockfish, and sheephead.
A similar study was conducted at the Redondo Beach Street car reef, where divers found over 2,800 fishes were concentrated within 25 months, according to the “Artificial Habitat in the Marine Environment” article. After 27 months, the average fish population on the reef consisted of 35 percent kelp bass and sand bass, 26.3 percent miscellaneous seaperch, 11.6 percent gobies, 9.7 percent blacksmiths, and 17.4 percent all other species combined, according to the same report.
In 1960, the department began a study in Santa Monica Bay looking at materials used for artificial reefs, hoping to determine the relative attractiveness for fishes of various materials and the relative life of these compared to cost. Streetcars, auto bodies, quarry rock, and concrete shelters were tested. Observations over several years indicated concrete boxes were the most effective in attracting fishes, with quarry rock a very close second, according to “A Guide to the Artificial Reefs of Southern California” (1989), a booklet authored by Robin D. Lewis and Kimberly K. McKee about CDFW’s artificial reefs. A few years later, CDFW started building more artificial reefs in Southern California with most made of quarry rock, although some were made with concrete blocks or rubble, pier pilings, car tires and ships.
Artificial reef construction and research became one aspect of the department’s new Nearshore Sport fish Habitat Enhancement Program in the 1980s. The program’s goals were to rehabilitate and enhance stocks of certain living marine resources, improve recreational fishing opportunities and evaluate the potential of using artificial reefs as mitigation/compensation for the loss of certain habitat and associated living resources. The California Legislature enacted Assembly Bill 706 (Fish and Game Code, Article 2, Section 6420-6425) in 1985, formalizing CDFW’s status as the lead agency in California’s reef building process. It authorized CDFW to construct additional reefs and administer reef studies with cooperation and assistance from the California university systems and other appropriate academic institutions and organizations.
CDFW, in all, built 32 artificial reefs in the state – 30 between Santa Barbara and the international border with Mexico – most between 1962 and the early 1990s.
Brian Owens, a senior environmental scientist with CDFW, said the program came to a halt in the 2000s due to a lack of funding.
PRESENT
Owens said CDFW does still get requests from parties interested in building artificial reefs and not just for sportfishing reasons.
“We’ve gotten all kinds of reef requests,” Owens said.
Those requests have included interests in building artificial reefs for mitigation from potential sea level rise and coastal storm damage, restoration, diving, kelp harvesting, oyster beds and dampening impacts from marine protected areas.
CDFW is not developing any artificial reefs at the moment. The department is, however, looking to develop a statewide artificial reef maintenance plan.
“We do have interest in developing our statewide management plan,” Owens said.
The department is currently surveying people who use the reefs, hoping to build a picture of how and why artificial reefs are used by anglers and divers, how frequently these reefs are visited by each recreational user group and qualitatively describe the fishes and invertebrates living on the reef. Owens said the surveying will take place through March.
“It should give us a little better picture of whose using the reefs and why,” Owens said.
The survey is also intended to evaluate if the reefs are still in place and determine their conditions.
CDFW built reefs off the coasts of Marina del Rey, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Mission Beach, Pendleton and one near the international border with Mexico. Owens said of the bigger ones, including one near the Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Huntington Beach, appear on some fishing maps. Owens said the data gleaned from the survey will hopefully give a sense of if the artificial reefs were successful in growing the sportfish population.
“I think if you talk to fishermen they would say it’s successful,” Owens said.
FUTURE
The results from the survey CDFW is currently conducting will be used in developing a statewide artificial reef plan and will also help guide strategies for possible future reef developments in California.
The department, over the past five or so years, has held several public meetings on artificial reefs to discuss the present situation and future of artificial reefs.
Discussions not connected to CDFW have also sprung up about turning soon-to-be decommissioned oil and gas platforms into artificial reefs. There are 27 oil platforms along the Southern California coast nearing the end of their working lives, which are set to shut down. The decommissioning of the platforms has stirred up both supporters of turning oil rigs into reefs and opponents.
Time will tell what, if anything, is next for artificial reefs in California.
‘WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN?’ SAILING CONVENTION PROMOTES WOMEN IN SAILING FOR 30 YEARS
By LINDSEY GLASGOW, The Log Jan. 24, 2020
CORONA DEL MAR—A 30-something-year-old Gail Hine didn’t mind being one of only a few women in a room full of men in the 1970s and 80s. They taught her how to sail after all and she wanted to learn from them. In her spare time in the early 80s, Gail Hine could be found at the helm of Hummer, a 24-foot Nightingale sailboat. When she was on the water, she wasn’t cruising, she was racing. The role required an unwavering concentration; finding the sweet spot with the wind could be the difference between second and first place.
“I liked steering the boat the best, for me being on the helm and steering the boat is the place I had to be,” Hine recalled.
Fast forward several decades to 2020 and Hine is still at the helm, but no longer of a boat, instead a 30-year-old successful convention, now called Sailing Convention for Women.
“It’s been a nice community to spend my recreational life in and some of my professional life,” Hine said.
Hine, who was the first woman to attain a number of positions and awards in the Southern California yachting community, is as humble as they come. She was the first woman to serve as Southern California Yachting Association director, commodore of Redondo Beach Yacht Club (1980-81) and president of Recreational Boaters of California (1994). She was the first woman recipient of the ‘Peggy Slater Award’ in 1990, Women’s Sailing Association’s ‘Marilyn Butefish Award,’ SCYA’s ‘Warren Ewert Trophy,’ Association of Santa Monica Bay Yacht Clubs’ ‘Yachtsman of the Year,’ the Pacific Coast Yachting Association’s ‘Charles A. Langlais Trophy,’ SCYA’s 1998 ‘James Webster Trophy’ for outstanding contributions to the yachting community, and BCYC’s Newport Yachtsman of the Year in 1998 and 2002.
“I’m a Capricorn,” Hine said laughing, alluding to the characteristics of the zodiac sign, of which ambitious tops the list. “It’s my personality.”
Hine has been a leading force in promoting women’s sailing in Southern California for more than four decades. She has held various volunteer positions, including serving 27 years on the Board of Directors of Recreational Boaters of California (1981-2008), advocating for boater-related issues to state and local governments.
She grew up in suburban Illinois where she occasionally went sailing with her father and participated in a local league in high school. It wasn’t until 1968, when she moved to Southern California with her husband, that her involvement in sailing really bloomed.
“We were living Redondo Beach and I said well I used to sail,” Hine said. “Maybe we should look into sailing.”
The couple bought a small boat and joined Palos Verdes Yacht Club, which is now Redondo Beach Yacht Club, as a way to plug into their new community. The decision was a recreational one; as Hine continued working as a graphic designer, later going on to build her own business, Teamway Marketing and Design. Hine learned how to sail and quickly learned she preferred racing to simply cruising; she would later go on to win the Marina del Rey to San Diego race in 1984.
“I like excitement of making the turns and interacting with the other boats,” Hine said.
Hine was finding her stride in her new community in the late 70s and wondered why there weren’t more women involved.
“I was at Redondo Beach Yacht Club and there were hardly any women out there doing this
and I said where are all the other women?”
Hine began organizing a series of seminars at the yacht club for women.
“I just started on my own with the boys at the club, let’s get some women to go sailing,” Hine said. “I said if you teach it and work on the mechanics of it, I’ll organize it.”
The seminars started in 1975 and took off from there.
“It was super successful,” Hine said. “I started with three, went to four, went to five, went to six.”
Hine was eventually asked by SCYC to chair a women’s sailing committee for the Southern California boating community and she quickly got to work gathering women, crafting goals and starting a newsletter. It was in organizing this committee that Hine got the idea to start a convention, with the first event held in 1990. SCYC sponsored the event for the first 27 years. Current Women’s Sailing Convention Co-Chair Kathie Arnold, who had been sailing since she was 16-years-old, learned about the convention through the newsletter in 1991.
“I was getting her newsletter and I thought I’ve got to meet this gal, I’ve just got to meet her,” Arnold said.
It took only one convention for Arnold to get involved. She taught workshops for many years and has served as the second in command since 1992.
Arnold boasts quite a resume herself. She lived on a 36-foot sailboat in the Mediterranean,
crossed the Atlantic, spent eight months in West Indies and Caribbean and a year in Florida. She held a U.S. Coast Guard Master Captain’s License for many years, worked as a Charter Captain and taught at OCC Sailing Center for Seamanship in Newport Beach. She won Southern California Yachting Association’s Peggy Slater Award in 2000 and the National Women’s Sailing Association/Boat US Leadership in Women’s Sailing Award in 2016.
From women who have sailed the world to successful racers and fellow women sailing advocates, the convention draws about two dozen instructors from multiple states, all who also boast impressive experience, with about 40 percent holding a U.S. Coast Guard Master Captain’s License. The event also attracts attendees from around the U.S. Other organizations from around the country have even used the event as a model to create their own.
“Since she did this, other states started their own conventions,” Arnold said. “Look at what she started.”
“This event has spawned four or five other events,” Hine said.
Hine said a workshop crafted for the convention has even inspired a U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary course. The “Suddenly Single-Handed” workshop at the Sailing Convention for Women puts participants in a scenario where they are on their way to Catalina Island when the other person onboard with them falls down the companionway and breaks an arm. The workshop teaches participants what they should do.
Similarly, the USCG offers a “Suddenly In Command” class, which teaches participants what to do in case of an emergency, such as the captain falling overboard.
This year’s Sailing Convention for Women will be held on Feb. 1. Registration costs $235 and is limited to approximately 240 attendees; it is expected to sellout. More information on the
convention can be found online at sailingconventionforwomen.com/. Organizations such as the Women’s Sailing Association also provide year-round resources for women interested in sailing.
Hine remains deeply involved in the administrative side of sailing – serving as the Director of the National Women’s Sailing Association / Women’s Sailing Foundation and member of WSA-OC – and still runs her graphic design business in Murrieta.
“It’s a sport you can start at seven and you can do it to 77,” Hine said.
Children lobbying for health care
By LINDSEY WELLING, The (Hanover) Evening Sun August 19, 2017
HANOVER, Pa. (AP) — Ask 11-year-old Jackson Corbin and 9-year-old Henry Corbin of Hanover why they are lobbying senators in Capitol Hill every week and they say, “We have to save our health care.”
The brothers have spent time in D.C. and Harrisburg reaching out to legislators to voice their concern about proposed cuts to Medicaid.
Their mom, Anna Corbin, remembers one lobbying trip when someone asked Jackson, “What would you say to someone who says you aren’t an adult, you aren’t a voter?”
“He said, ‘Without health care, I might not make it to be an adult,'” Anna said.
Jackson and Henry are fighting to protect funds for Medicaid because without it, their family might not be able to afford health care. Both boys have Noonan syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects various systems of the body.
The disorder affects people differently. For Jackson and Henry, the biggest problems are with their heart, digestive system and inability for their blood to clot.
It also means bills can pile up quickly between frequent emergency room visits, specialist visits and prescriptions, which can cost as much as $850 a month for a single medication, Anna said.
Jackson and Henry like riding bikes, Legos and superheros but have to be more careful than other kids. Jackson remembered a recent trip to the emergency room when he bruised his leg falling off his bike.
“I remember I had to go to the hospital for a couple days, and I had to have the IV,” Jackson said.
Vomiting and digestion is another major problem. There are good days and bad days, Anna said. On the bad days, the boys could be up all night.
It also means a lot of monitoring and checking for symptoms of serious health problems. Henry has pulmonary stenosis of the heart, which doesn’t affect him right now but could at any time become a serious problem, Anna said.
Jackson and Henry play an active role in taking care of themselves. They can tell you what conditions they have, what medicines they take and what specialists they see.
“I make them take an active role in their care because I won’t always be here,” Anna said. “And that also means from a legislative standpoint.”
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The boys were first diagnosed in 2008.
The year before, Jackson had been hospitalized multiple times for fevers and vomiting.
The Corbins knew something was wrong and decided to get tests done. After many tests, the boys were diagnosed with Noonan. Anna had already missed so many days of work from hospital trips that she decided to quit in order to take care of the boys. She had been working at Jackson’s daycare in hopes she wouldn’t have to miss as many days.
The bills hit fast. It wasn’t just the medical costs, it was gas to travel to the hospital, food and prescriptions, Anna said.
The first few years after the diagnosis, they had to sell furniture and other belongings so they didn’t have choose between groceries or medicine, Anna said.
“We were $42,000 in credit card debt,” Anna said. “We were about to lose the house, we had no money.”
Anna said it was hard for her and her husband but also the boys.
“They remember the times we couldn’t go to a birthday party because we didn’t have enough money to buy a gift for a child,” Anna said.
Through a friend, Anna found out about Medicaid and PH-95, which allows children in Pennsylvania with disabilities or conditions that limit their ability to perform basic functions to get medical assistance without consideration of the parents’ income.
The Corbins are still insured under a primary insurance but rely on Medicaid to pick up the extra costs.
“This is a temporary help for us so we are able to send them to college,” Anna said.
The attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a new health care bill brought fear that they would once again struggle to afford the simple things like milk, Anna said.
In Pennsylvania, 34 percent of the state’s residents are insured under Medicaid and Medicare, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. That comes at a cost to states and the federal government, who both contribute to the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Spending for the two programs was in the trillions in 2015, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The initial health care bill proposed by the Trump administration, which failed to pass the Senate, included $772 billion in cuts proposed to Medicaid over 10 years, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
Marc Stier, the director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, said the proposal to limit federal spending on traditional Medicaid by imposing per-capita caps on federal funds would cost the state anywhere between 10 and 30 billion over the first six years.
Jenny Englerth, the President and CEO of Family First Health, said the overall concern for those that are benefiting from the Medicaid system is that all versions of the proposed health care reform bills have contained cuts to Medicaid dollars, which means either fewer benefits or fewer beneficiaries.
“The bottom line is their coverage may or may not continue,” Englerth said.
Englerth said one of the other issues is the amount of money spent on health care. The challenge is finding a way to finance health care for everyone in the country, she said.
The Corbins and their sons have spent the past year lobbying against efforts to repeal the ACA, most recently as part of the “Little Lobbyists.”
“(Little Lobbyists) is parents who are taking their children to Capitol Hill and saying, ‘Look at these kids; Don’t take their care away,'” Anna said.
Jackson and Henry spent as much as two or three days a week in D.C. and Harrisburg reaching out to legislators, visiting 100 senators offices in one day during a recent trip and meeting with Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey on another.
The Trump administration was unsuccessful in passing any of its proposed health care reform bills, something Anna said is a small victory for them.
“My ultimate goal is for people to not have to worry about health care and how they’re going to pay for it,” Anna said.
Anna said she would like to see the health care system become a single payer plan, in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health care financing.
She thinks the government needs to find a way to make health care more affordable for everyone. Until then, the battle isn’t over, she said.
Medicaid/Medicare quick facts
.Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that, together with the Children’s Health Insurance Program, provides health coverage to over 72.5 million Americans, including children, pregnant women, parents, seniors and individuals with disabilities, according to medicaid.gov.
.Medicare is a federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older and certain younger people with disabilities, according to medicare.gov.
.The Affordable Care Act is a health care reform law enacted in March 2010 that aimed to make health insurance available to more people and expanded the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, according to medicaid.gov
.Medicaid is jointly funded by the federal government and states, according to medicaid.gov.
.Medicare is funded by a payroll tax, premiums and surtaxes from beneficiaries and general revenue, according to medicare.gov.
.In Pennsylvania, 34 percent of the state’s residents are insured under Medicaid and Medicare, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.
.Medicare spending was $646.2 billion in 2015 and Medicaid spending was $545.1 billion in 2015, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Heroin hits home: three families share the despair of heroin
By LINDSEY WELLING, The Herald-Mail February 7, 2017
HAGERSTOWN, Md. – Cynthia Holland had two college degrees and was married with two sons. Her youngest son, Keon Askins, 19, was about 15 years old when he found out his mother was using heroin.
Askins said he found it on her dresser in her room and asked her what it was.
“Whatever she told me I knew it was a lie,” Askins said. “I could smell it. It had a weird smell to it, and that’s when I knew.”
Holland said her addiction started six years ago when she was prescribed oxycodone, a powerful pain reliever, for a pinched nerve in her hip.
After the doctor stopped her prescriptions, Holland said she started writing her own. She turned from prescription pain pills to heroin at the end of 2013 because it was cheaper and more effective.
Askins said that once he got over his initial anger at his mother’s drug use, he started helping her deliver heroin for money. That is when school became less important and money paramount, he said.
“I definitely started messing up when she wasn’t on me,” he said. “I started hanging out with stupid people, doing stupid things with them.”
Holland was arrested in Baltimore for possession in November 2015. Her first call out of jail was to Askins, and Holland asked if he had gotten the drugs out of her drawer, she said.
“And I realized how messed up that sounded,” she said. “I contemplated overdosing, so I didn’t have to put my kids through (it) anymore.”
Holland said she felt despair, contemplating death as a viable solution to what she saw as an insurmountable six-year addiction. Her kids were involved, and her marriage was crumbling, she said.
“How can I tell him not to go do things when he’s seen me shoot up dope?” Holland asked.
Despite court orders to stay in the state, Holland said she left abruptly for treatment in Michigan on Nov. 6, 2015, because she wouldn’t have been able to get clean in her old environment.
“I knew she would die if she didn’t get help,” Askins said.
Holland said she has been clean since Nov. 12, 2015. Her marriage remains broken, but she is regaining her maternal role in Askins’ life, making sure he completes his high-school certificate.
“Before I was so sick I didn’t care what he did, If he went to school or not,” she said.
Searching for help
Kelsey Pifer was about Askins’ age when she first tried heroin.
When Pifer was 20 years old, a longtime friend, Gunnar Whipp, overdosed from the drug.
A few days after his death, she went to see her mother, Sandy Pifer, at work. Sandy said Kelsey was crying because Whipp had been a friend since preschool.
“I just asked her if she had done it,” Sandy Pifer said. “And she said that she did, and that she needed help.”
Pifer said she felt terrified, tired and anxious during the next four days while searching for help for her daughter.
She finally found a facility in Annapolis that would Immediately take her daughter for 60 days. That is how long Kelsey was in treatment before she relapsed.
It wasn’t until her second relapse that Sandy Pifer said that she decided that Kelsey needed to be separated from Hagerstown.
A Save Our Children support group had started in Frederick by then, and helped her connect with a treatment center in Florida.
“My daughter was on a plane the next day,” Pifer said.
That was Feb. 18, 2016.
Kelsey is now 22 and has been clean for 11 months. She is living in a sober home in Florida, where she is the assistant house manager.
Next month, she will share her story for the first time to a recovery group of others at the treatment center.
“I asked her the other day if there was ever a time I didn’t have to worry about her,” Pifer said. “And she said she couldn’t say, but that for today, she was good.”
Broken hearts
Heart-broken is the feeling Jade Whipp hopes no one else has to experience because of losing a family member to heroin.
Her younger brother, Gunnar, died of a heroin overdose on Sept. 8, 2015.
He was 20 years old, a Boonsboro High School graduate and an athlete.
“I knew when my mother called that morning that he was dead,” Whipp said.
She said there were times her brother looked good and was doing well, but he took a downturn on June 19, 2015.
That is the day his friend, Sam Winkelman, 20, died of a heroin overdose in Baltimore.
Whipp said Gunnar never asked her for help, but he made numerous efforts to get clean.
“Everything I do that deals with heroin is for him.” she said. “I don’t want his legacy to be that he died of a heroin overdose.”
Whipp said she hopes Gunnar’s legacy is about being an intelligent, athletic, caring, funny and beautiful soul of a young man.
His empty seat at the dinner table is extra hard for the family on Christmas, birthdays and other holidays.
On those days, Whipp said she visits his grave.
“I’ll just slip into the graveyard and sit and talk to him,” she said. “Tell him about my day, or what I’m doing to advocate for another family not to lose someone.”
Whipp said spreading awareness and going to Hagerstown’s Save Our Children peer-support group has saved her.
Debbie Fling started the group in Hagerstown just over a year ago on Feb. 3, 2016. It was standing-room-only on that first night, she said.
Both Sandy and Jade both found solace that night and have been coming ever since.
The peer group meets every Wednesday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Boonsboro.
“I needed to be part of the solution,” Fling said. “It devastates families, it’s a family addiction.”
W.Va. business owners makes reusing and recycling their job
By LINDSEY WELLING, The Herald-Mail, April 17, 2016
LEETOWN, W.Va. –Not even waste goes to waste at the Tabb farm in Leetown.
The Tabb family has farmed in Jefferson County, W.Va., since 1872. Corn, wheat, soybeans and hay are grown on its 1,800 acres, and 500 Angus beef cows are raised to slaughter. The animals are given home-grown feed that is free of antibiotics and hormones, and all of it is fertilized with compost created on the property.
Lyle C. Tabb & Sons Inc. is run by Lyle C. Tabb III, 67, who is known as Cam; his wife, Jane, 63; their son, Lyle Tabb, 40; and Cam’s brother, Howard, 55. It has one full-time employee and one part-timer.
“I married into the farm,” Jane Tabb said while sitting at a table inside the former tenant house on the property that serves as the home she shares with Cam, a cat named Sweet Pea and an aged Australian blue-tick heeler named Rocky.
The way the farm on Old Leetown Pike operates has changed a lot since that fateful marriage.
The family started composting in 1990, after it was discovered that the reason nothing was growing on two of the farm’s acres was because the Jefferson County landfill was leaking there. It took three years to get the problem handled, Jane said.
“We figured we needed to be part of the solution,” she said.
The Tabbs already were using some of the manure produced by their 300 dairy cows to fertilize their land. Then she and Cam went to a presentation about recycling and composting and decided to expand their operation.
That operation includes a lot of waste from the public.
On a tour of the farm’s property, Tabb showed an area off a dirt lane just up the road from her home where the public can drop leaves and yard waste — as is or in biodegradable bags — for free. There’s no charge for that because it doesn’t require grinding, a process used a lot for the Tabbs’ other recycling ventures that is done by a machine run on diesel fuel.
The yard clippings and leaves are sold as compost or added to topsoil mix.
“For them, it’s convenience. For us, it’s another component added to the compost,” Tabb said of those who leave their yard debris in the designated area.
Speaking of convenience, the Tabbs bring roll-off boxes to farms, construction sites and areas where storm debris is being collected. Farmers fill them with manure, and those at other locations load them up with pallets, tree stumps and other kinds of wood debris. The boxes are dropped off and picked up in the family’s four 10-wheelers, which have lots of years on them, but “my husband and son are superb diesel mechanics” and keep them running, Tabb said.
“We haul in most everything” from Jefferson and Berkeley counties in West Virginia, plus parts of Virginia, a service that comes with a fee, she said.
Harpers Ferry (W.Va.) National Historical Park is among the larger clients. The family used to take in frozen food scraps from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg, W.Va., but now that facility has its own composting operation, Tabb said.
Pile it on
Down the lane from the yard-waste drop-off area is a sizable pile of construction debris waiting to be ground. Nearby are mounds of the ground wood, on top of which cats played. Tabb sifted some through her hands to show how soft it is, making it perfect for animal bedding.
Any nails that might have been in the wood are removed by the grinder and sold as scrap metal, she explained.
Large machines are scattered all over the property, ready to grind and sift. A front-end loader is used to mix the compost.
The winding dirt road leads to sizable heaps of sticks and stumps. Tabb, a Jefferson County commissioner, said a trommel is used to sift the dirt off the stumps that often are generated when land is cleared. A flow chart she provided shows how the stumps are split, and the dirt, stones and small wood they generate are mixed with compost and screened. That blend is sold as topsoil mix and for bioremediation, a process that helps remove contaminants in soil and water.
Processed wood such as building scraps and pallets are not only ground into bedding, but used to make mulch, Tabb said.
The Tabbs even collect carcasses and food scraps, which are composted and applied to crops. Tabb said more than 90 percent of their compost is applied to their own fields, emphasizing that the carcasses are not part of the compost sold to the public.
The breakdown process takes time.
She said raw wood takes about two years to turn to mulch, and composting can take one to two years, depending on what’s in the mix.
“We don’t let the compost manage us” like dairy farming did, Tabb said.
Transitions
The Tabb family started selling its dairy cows in 1998, finishing in 2003, to start raising beef cows.
The dairy operation, the prices for which were set by milk co-ops, was losing money. By taking on beef cows, they had to learn about pricing and selling directly to the public.
“It was a real shift in our mental models,” Tabb said.
The meat from the Angus raised on the farm is sold to families and groups. Lyle and his wife are selling it under the name Vinemont Beef Co.
Meanwhile, the recycling of seemingly all things natural continues, and Cam now helps others establish their own similar operations.
Keeping track of all the incoming and outgoing materials is time-consuming, but “not compared to dairy farming,” Jane said.
She said she can take Sundays off now, but she used to work weekends when the family was in the dairy business so others could take time off.
Just like it takes time for the compost to reach the right consistency for spreading on fields and gardens, it has been a process to figure out how best to reuse the wood, grass and other debris handled at the farm.
“It just evolved,” Tabb said of the farm’s composting and recycling operations. “We’ve always valued farmland and see this as a way to make it not only economically sustainable, but environmentally sustainable.”