On the Harbor: Meet Jackson Willett, the guy to know if you’re having a boat delivered

Jackson Willett, owner of Newport Coast Marine Yacht Charters and Powerboat School

By LEN BOSE

In the world of ever-changing marine insurance requirements, yacht brokers must reach out and become closer with U.S. Coast Guard licensed captains. Gone are the days when a new boat owner can take the keys of a vessel and learn how to operate and maintain a vessel on their own. 

If you have just purchased a 35-foot plus vessel, and have never owned or operated a vessel before, you will now be required to have somewhere between 20 or 40 hours of instruction. 

Others might never get the knack on how to maneuver a 60-foot vessel through the harbor safely and will require a skipper to pilot it.

For those just entering the yachting lifestyle, they will have two options. One is hiring a skipper to take you out each time you want to use the vessel or two, hiring a skipper to instruct you how to become efficient enough to run and maintain your purchase. 

Enter Jackson Willett, owner of Newport Coast Marine Yacht Charters and Powerboat School.

 Our town is not that big, and it’s easy to notice the people that are running the extra mile and working hard. About three years ago, I first noticed Willett on the docks, or on the bridge of larger boats instructing owners how to maneuver it. From a distance, I could see that he is a good coach by his body language and the success I witnessed with his students coming in and out of their slips.

Willett was born in Manhattan, New York City, and sailed in the junior program at the New York Yacht Club, spending his days sailing in the Hamptons, Long Island Sound and Oyster Bay. He holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a B.A. from Washington & Lee University. 

“This is my second career. I was a corporate financial consultant for 15 years and moved to California in 1998, bouncing between San Francisco and LA, then moving back to Newport Beach in 2002,” said Willett. 

“I received my 100 Ton Master Captain’s license 10 years ago through the Maritime Institute in San Diego. Then, I started private instruction shortly after while living aboard a Grand Banks 36 for three years in Newport Beach. 

“Next, I started as an instructor at OCC teaching their sailing and powerboat courses and quickly observed that many of the powerboat students were inquiring for instruction on their boats. 

“So, I started the Newport Coast Maritime Academy three years ago.” 

During our interview, it quickly became obvious that Willett is a well-educated person, easily remembering all the different government agencies he has to deal with, while using their initials along with his understanding of the whole marine industry. 

He explained the story of how he received his U.S. Sailing Power Boat certification. “U.S. Sailing turned me down three times. Emails and phone conversations were not getting it done, so I flew out to Rhode Island requesting a meeting with senior management. After I made my presentation, U.S. Sailing management loved it, and that’s how I obtained the certification,” Willett said. 

The Newport Coast Maritime Academy website can be found at https://ncma-ca.com/. In his bio page there, Willett explains that, “He specializes in training owners and their families to become proficient operators of their vessel and qualify with insurance carriers to command their own vessel.” 

He has more than 20 years of experience power cruising and sailing on the East Coast, Southern California, Mexico, and Hawaii and extensive education training.

Best of all, Willett offers a pragmatic and principled approach to teaching all aspects of vessel ownership and operation.

“The Basic Cruising Course is described as a 20-hour program taught onboard your own boat. Starting with a vessel orientation by lifting up every hatch and access cover, going into the engine room orienting the owner with the systems onboard and reviewing all forms of preventive maintenance. Then, reviewing items before departing, while cruising and then on your return. Seventy percent of the course is concentrated on close-quarter maneuvering. We teach them everything about docking, rules of the road, aids to navigation, chart reading, anchoring, emergency procedures and VHF radio operation.”

There are many other courses that can be taken from Coastal Cruising, Night Operations, Electronic Navigation, Maintenance and Basic Sailing to Advanced Sailing. 

There is also another hidden pearl of knowledge he gave me. During our interview, we discussed his delivery agreement which he completes before delivering a boat for an owner. Personally, I would have saved a fortune and hours’ worth of grief if I had completed this interview years ago on how to set the terms for a delivery crew. 

I was so impressed with the detail of his agreement, that I reminded him that I was available to crew for him anytime the circumstances occur.

If you are considering purchasing a vessel anytime in the near future or looking for a delivery crew, I strongly recommend the Newport Coast Maritime Academy.

Sea ya.

~~~~~~~~

Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport.

On the Harbor: Completing Phase II of the Lower Bay Dredging Project

Don Logan photo

By LEN BOSE

We all know that the Super Bowl is next weekend, but did you know it’s being played right here in Newport Beach, California? I bet you were thinking NFL championships. No, this is all about completing Phase II of the Lower Bay Dredging Project, which only comes around every 100 years. The cost of a Super Bowl ticket and dredging is similar in that both are very expensive and difficult to obtain. The purpose of this column is to explain the need for a Confined Aquatic Disposal (CAD), or “Super Hole” as I call it, in our harbor and explain how it will be used to reach our long-game goals.

The goal of the Phase II dredging project is to improve navigation and streamline the dredging process in Newport Harbor by creating a cost-effective disposal location for unsuitable materials. The level of unsuitability of this material is less than what the FDA permits for the swordfish you would be served at any of the seafood restaurants in town – that is, 1.5 ppm for the unsuitable material versus 1.6 ppm for the swordfish. The construction of a CAD facility is the solution for unsuitable sediment dredged from within lower Newport Harbor that is not accessible for beach replenishment or disposal at the EPA approved disposal site called LA3, which is about six miles out to sea from the harbor entrance.

 So, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me go back to the beginning when on May 23, 1936, President Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key on his White House desk, to start the opening of our harbor. Prior to opening day, the Army Corps of Engineers removed 8,500 tons of sand and 50,000 tons of rock and the Lower Bay was dredged to a depth of 15 feet with the main channels 20 feet and the entrance channel to 25 feet at the cost of $1,835,000. Now fast forward to 2003 with the start of the environmental restoration of the Upper Bay and the Lower Bay with 2.9 million cubic yards of material removed. For us to return to our original depth, we have to enter into Phase II, which is the removal of one million cubic yards of sediment that covers most of the Lower Bay from the harbor entrance channel to the most western reaches of the harbor.

Of the one million cubic yards (CY), about 90 percent of the sediment in the harbor is characterized as “suitable.” Our councilmembers, harbor commissioners and city staff with a huge amount of hard work were able to lobby the EPA to allow us this one-time deal to place sediment at 1.5 parts per million from 1.0 parts per million. This allows us to place 850,000 CY in the LA3 dumping site. Seventy thousand CY of clean sand will be placed six miles off our coast that will replenish our beaches. This is a beautiful thing, and we are very lucky to be so “sand-rich.” The other 100,000 CY is “unsuitable material” and is the responsibility of the city to dispose of.

This is where the Super Hole/Confined Aquatic Disposal (CAD) is needed to complete the dredging of the Lower Bay. The hole would be 450 feet x 450 feet and 47 feet deep. The CAD will be located in the five points area of the harbor in the anchorage area just east of Lido Isle. The EPA and Army Corps have accepted the CAD as an affordable method to safely dispose of unsuitable materials. The CAD system is not new and is in seven other locations in the U.S., including two in California that are located in Long Beach and San Francisco. Simply put, the CAD system is the only feasible option the city has to complete our harbor’s dredging at this time.

There are concerns from some harbor users that the dredging will stir up the unsuitable materials, and if you are going to dredge them up why place them back in the harbor? When referring to unsuitable materials, mercury is the material that grabs your attention first. Understanding mercury concentrations within our harbor is well beyond my pay grade, yet it is simple to understand that these unsuitable materials are at the top of the level of the sediment. So, if your kids or grandchildren are making sandcastles on the beaches around Lido, Balboa Bay Club, or at Marina Park, they could potentially be playing in or near unsuitable material. By dredging the harbor, we would be digging up these materials and placing them in a 47-foot hole and placing a three-foot cap of clean sand on top of it which completely isolates chemical contaminants from the environment. With one million CY of sediment removed from the harbor, the bay will have two hundred million gallons of additional water. The deeper the water,  the bigger the flush. These two flushes a day bring in cleaner water and nutrients to our ecosystem.

Another concern is the disruption of navigation at this point of the harbor with the scows and dredging equipment. After further review and a better understanding of the whole project, this is simply a win-win for the entire harbor. I’m confident the city will work with the community to minimize the impact. The many different harbor users have worked and played around the dredging equipment before, therefore it should be no different than the last time we dredging  in Phase I.

So here is the good news! The Army Corps of Engineers’ work plan for 2021 includes 6.7 million dollars for dredging Newport Harbor, which is twice as much as we received in 2012. That brings the scoreboard to $9.6 million in federal funding. The city has spent two million already on engineering, design and permitting along with six million in sponsorship in hand and is working to find the remaining funds to complete the project. It has taken years to get to this point, with Congressman Ken Calvert (CA-42) and Congresswoman Michelle Steel (CA-48) stepping up and obtaining the funding for our harbor. A Bravo/Zulu for a job well done must be flown for City Councilmembers Duffy Duffield, Mayor Brad Avery, Harbor Commissioner Scott Cunningham, Public Works Director Dave Webb and Public Works Administrative Manager Chris Miller. It’s game time baby…the ball is teed up, so let’s do this and kick the ball past the end zone. The last thing we need is to have some Lucy pull the ball away and have us land on our backs for another 100 years.

Sea ya.

~~~~~~~~

Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport

WHY THE CAD PROJECT IS NECESSARY

                                                                                  By

                                                                                                  Duffy Duffield

This week the City of Newport Beach was informed that the federal government had approved funding for our dredging project. It took five trips to Washington DC and one virtual trip this year to finally receive the good news. Congratulations to all those who worked to get this done!  

Newport Harbor’s main channels have been federally controlled since 1936. The U.S. Army Corps is responsible to maintain an authorized design depth of 10-20 feet (depending on the particular channel). 

Newport Harbor is actually an estuary with many thousands of acres upstream delivering sediment, vegetation (organic) and trash (inorganic) to the Lower Bay both in dry water flows (no rain, daily runoff) and rain events. 

The U.S. Army Corps and the EPA, along with several other agencies including the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board and the California Coastal Commission, control the dredging projects in our FEDERAL CHANNELS, therefore the City must comply with their strict rules and regulations. Our harbor has not been comprehensively dredged to its design depth since 1936. In 2012, 600,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediment was removed from Newport Harbor with 130,000 cubic yards deemed “unsuitable for ocean disposal” and barged to a confined aquatic disposal (CAD) site at the Port of Long Beach where it was used as fill and buried. To be clear:  Unsuitable material is not considered “toxic” nor “contaminated” per the stringent definitions of the EPA. There are different criteria for determining whether sediments are harmful to animals in the harbor vs. in the ocean. Our sediments are not harmful to the animals that live in the harbor nor to those that live in the ocean. Because of the large volume of material that we need to dredge, however, EPA was concerned that this larger volume could skew the results so they preferred the safer alternative of keeping the material in the harbor.

Unfortunately, there are no plans in the foreseeable future at the Ports of Long Beach/Los Angeles to expand operations, so there is no opportunity now or in the future to dispose our unsuitable sediment at a remote CAD site elsewhere.   

The City has identified areas within the channels of Newport Harbor where approximately 106,000 cubic yards of unsuitable material still remain – areas adjacent to Lido Island, the peninsula, and along W. Coast Highway. Dredging this unsuitable material using an excavator, then barging to a shore-side processing area (assuming one were available), then trucking to a landfill, would potentially cost at least $21 million and require 8,800 truck trips (assume 12 cubic yards per truck). For many reasons, including the impact of the volume of truck trips within the community and the lack of availability of a shore-side processing area, we cannot truck the unsuitable material to a land fill or a confined disposal facility (CDF) without causing tremendous impacts to our infrastructure and our residents.   

The EPA set a mercury limit of 1.0 part per million for sediment to be placed at the federal disposal site six miles offshore referred to as “LA-3.” Our channels have sediment with mercury values between 1.5 to 5 parts per million in some areas. This is something from our industrial past and not associated with our current watershed best management practices. Because the tests did not show any impacts to the animals, the City negotiated with the EPA an increase from 1.0 to 1.5 parts per million that could be placed offshore resulting in a huge cost savings. EPA agreed with the test results yet they did not have any long term (20 plus years) studies to determine the correct mercury number as a threshold for ocean disposal. The City and the U.S. Army Corps worked feverishly with the EPA to allow a higher threshold for ocean placement, but ultimately, the EPA remained at 1.5. This EPA agreement also required the City develop an overall dredging plan (Sediment Management Plan) for the next several decades – a plan that also included a CAD site. Conversely, if no CAD is developed, then the option to place 1.5 parts per million is not an option and a more restrictive level would be imposed.   

Every day in Newport Harbor, humans and wildlife are exposed to this unsuitable material especially when sediment is stirred whether during natural rain flow events or navigating at lower tides. It is not buried. Rather, this unsuitable sediment sits on top of the harbor floor and can be found in the channels adjacent to private homes and public beaches. We have been living with this material since WWII, and while there have been no human or wildlife health issues as a result, the City would like to move it deeper underground so that we are not exposed to it.

SEDIMENT TESTING

Several aquatic animals were studied while living in the unsuitable sediment (under strict laboratory testing protocols developed by the EPA and regulatory agencies) for weeks and then removed to measure any toxicity or biological effects. All results were negative which means that those same animals were healthy and were not affected nor harmed by the unsuitable material. The tests also focused on the animal’s ability to absorb the mercury from the sediments, and those tests also showed no impacts. 

The living organisms, vegetation and wildlife in Newport Harbor are healthy and flourishing. The 2012 removal of 600,000 cubic yards of material radically improved water quality and resulted in the return of several fish species not seen for decades in the Newport Harbor. Additionally, our eelgrass beds have consistently grown to 112 acres per our most recent 2020 survey – they have not shrunk – proving with evidence that dredging makes a healthy harbor.  

OTHER HARBORS WITH CAD SITES

Long Beach, Port Hueneme, Boston Harbor, New Bedford, Chesapeake Bay, Humboldt Bay Harbor and Baltimore Harbor have implemented CAD sites in which to place their unsuitable material with the approvals from the regulatory agencies including the EPA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife etc. These projects were all successful and are being monitored and measured into the future. 

The CAD method is safe and economically feasible. If we choose not to construct a CAD site, the harbor will continue to have those 106,000 cubic yards of unsuitable material stirred up from the bottom and choking our beautiful and valuable harbor forever. Likewise, we will be prevented from dredging our channels down to their intended depths so that they can be fully utilized now and in the future.

On the Harbor: Boating, a treasured family business, passes down to the next generation

 

(L-R) Mike Howarth with his son, Barrett

By LEN BOSE

While working the harbor as a yacht broker, I am constantly on the water, walking through shipyards, launching boats, referring insurance agents and maintenance teams, because “It’s what I do.”

Each day we watch the tide come in then go out and over time we notice a change within and around the harbor. Some of the change is not substantial, yet just shifts in the wind. For example, while walking up the gangway from my slip in the Newport Marina, there was a group (I’ll call them kids) circled together telling sea stories. In the circle was Tyler and Travis Duffield talking to Carson Hill. The kids gave me a very welcoming hello, and I thought to myself there is the wind shift, which I understood would come someday.

Tyler and Travis Duffield are the siblings of Terry and Marshall Duffield who we all recognize as owners of Duffy Boats. Both young men are very active in the family business and have the individual skill sets that will take them well into the future. Last week, I was in the Duffy maintenance boatyard while Travis and Tyler were installing a new boat lifting system. I’ve also spent time with them understanding and marketing Following Sea, their Bertram 56. Both are focused on the task at hand, and it’s rather interesting listening to their fresh perspective of our harbor and the marine business.

With my life revolving around sailboats, it’s not that often I pull up to Hills Boat Service/Fuel Dock. Established in 1947, it’s quite obvious that we are shifting into the third generation of the family business. The integrity of the family name continues through the different generations. From afar, I have watched and worked with Gary Hill around the harbor for many years. I have not had a chance to work with his son Carson yet, although I have observed him greeting customers on the fuel dock and running the fuel tanker. Like they say, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” – and from our first meeting I respect the kid, and how he represents his family’s history in our harbor.

Bunker Hill Sr & Jr

Another arm from the Hill’s family tree is Bunker Hill with his son Bunker Hill Jr., who have been working together for close to 10 years as marine surveyors. They are not just any marine surveyors…they are the harbor’s go-tos for respected/quality marine surveys. I have worked with Jr. on a couple of boats, and have observed him working on the family boat where it is obvious that he takes pride in his work with a strong passion for boating. Jr. always greets me with a welcoming hello which translates to going the extra mile for you

While walking the boatyards, you recognize the best quickly, which I did some 32 years ago when I booked my first survey at Basin Marine. Dave New has always quickly shared information with me and taken extraordinarily good care of all of my customers. The New family has operated Basin Marine since 1939 with Don New at the helm. I met Dave in 1989 and he had already lost most of his hair. Dave’s son Derek jumped aboard in 2006 and has become the primary helmsman. Both still work closely together at their navigation table in the main office. Derek still has a full set of hair and greets me with a big smile, demonstrating that he wants to help. I’ve worked next to Derek while solving and estimating repairs. I have never disagreed with his recommendations while always feeling he has my clients’ best interests at heart.

Back in 2012, I wrote a story about meeting two boat making legends: Mike Howarth and Henry Mohrschladt. At that time Howarth took me back into his shop and introduced me to his son Barrett who had his head deep into the center console of a prototype of the Mag Bay Yachts 33. Mike called Barrett up for an introduction, in which Barrett quickly backed out of his difficult position to say hello, then dove back to his task of solving an electrical issue. Mike went on to explain that this project was all Barrett’s. Now after nine years, the team is building two of the sexiest boats on this planet – the Mag Bay 33’ Center Console and 42’ Sport Fisher. I had a chance to run into Barrett the other day while he was launching a 33’ Center Console at Newport Dunes by himself. I re-introduced myself and he said, “Yes, I know who you are Len. How have you been?” The greeting felt like I had not seen a good high school friend in years while taking the time to talk about the marine business with me. Another great kid that takes great pride in his work.

Speaking of great kids, Patty and Harvey Wills at Western Marine Marketing have recently handed over the helm to their son Whitney, who is out at every shipyard, boat show, and at the manufactures facility with the 16 marine products they represent. The Wills family has been a pillar in the yachting community for as long as I can remember. I witnessed Whitney demonstrate the new features of a Pettit bottom paint at our local shipyard, and I was instantly sold on the product and have recommended it to the Harbor 20 fleet.

I gotta tell you, it feels really comforting to know that our harbor is in good hands for years to come.

Sea ya.

~~~~~~~~

Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport.