The Kinta S has Cast Off
Issue 542
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The voice of The Island since 1996
The Island Moon
September 11, 2014 Around The Island By Dale Rankin
editor@islandmoon.com In case you’ve ever wondered what brought you to our little sandbar wander outside tonight right after sundown and look east. Monday night marked the third and final Supermoon of 2014 when the moon’s orbit brings it closest to the earth. This one is also the Harvest moon because it falls closest to the autumn equinox. For the next few days if you’re out on the beach at dusk and see that cornbread moon rise up out of the Gulf of Mexico, as the song says, you’ll remember why you came this way.
Dolly Beach Tropical Storm Dolly and the bits of rain she brought have come and gone and left our beaches littered with a carpet of leftover Sargassum from water to the dunes in many places. Beachgoers report beach driving much improved on Padre Island National Seashore and smooth driving from Big Shell south to Mansfield and much storm debris still visible. The usual smattering of hardhats and wooden chocks from rigs has been temporarily replaced by bits of houses and part of vessels churned up in the Gulf. We also had some reports of a brown foam washing up which looks a lot like the kind created by the dispersant used to break up the oil of the BP oil spill that washed up on the western Florida shore a few years back but a check with the Texas General Land Office said they had no confirmation of that.
The Kinta S has cast off The 155-foot coastal cargo ship Kinta S that will become part of the Nearshore Reef Corpus Christi 9 miles off Packery Channel has begun its journey to its watery Island home. (See photos at the top of this page). As of Monday the ship was in New Orleans and is being towed through the Intracoastal Canal to Port Aransas where it will enter the Gulf of Mexico and towed to the reef site and sunk, by the end of September weather permitting. .
Photos by Lila Harris, Aquatic Soul Photography The Kinta is being towed by the marine vessel Maranatha at 4.3 knots. Its progress can be tracked online here: http://www.vesselfinder. com/?mmsi=367162090. The Kinta S will become part of the 160-acre reef site which already includes more than forty tons of concrete structures in 73 feet of water. When it is in place the Kinta will be located at: NAD83 Latitude 27° 38' 42.33" N; NAD83 Longitude 97° 00' 21.72" W and will be marked by a buoy. The project is developed and managed by the Saltwater-fisheries Enhancement Association (SEA) which is a non-profit organization which promotes local projects for the benefit of recreational users. Congratulations to Project Manager Mike Hurst and the folks at SEA for making this project happen. We look forward to being part of the Island flotilla headed out to watch as the ship is sunk at the reef site.
Island Burglar Season The summer tourist season is barely over but right on cue the Island Burglary Season kicked off with a bang this week with a rash of car breaks-ins. So far we’ve had reports of three on Whitecap, three on Dasmarinas, two on SPID, and one on Compass. The annual migration of OTB peckerwoods looking for career opportunities on The Island comes in stages; Stage I brings the bottom feeders looking for low-hanging fruit
Around continued on A3
Remembering 9/11/2001 and those who died
FREE
Weekly
September 18 and 25
Padre Island Yacht Club Brings in the Harvest Moon with Beach Party
Island Voters Set to Pick Candidates in the Next Two Weeks
By Brent Rourk In the next two weeks Padre Island’s 6200 registered voters will gather to decide who to endorse in the races for Corpus Christi Mayor and City Council. The Island United Political Action Committee (IUPAC) will hold its public candidate endorsement forums at the Holiday Inn on two nights one week apart, with the candidates for Mayor and Council District 4 speaking on Thursday, September 18, and the candidates for Council AtLarge seats at the same location one week later, on Thursday, September 25. Both gatherings begin a 6 p.m.
By Brent Rourk Eighty members of the Padre Island Yacht Club spread their chairs and tents out on the beach near Bob Hall Pier and enjoyed a fabulous late summer afternoon and evening socializing and watching a large and colorful Harvest Moon emerge from the eastern horizon.
The candidates will have an opportunity to speak, followed by a vote of the registered voters present. The candidate receiving the majority of votes in each race for Mayor and District 4 and the top three vote getters for the three At-Large seats
Election continued on A15
Real Estate Inventory Shrinking on Padre Island
It was a big night for ‘oooohs and ‘aaaaahs.
A little Island History
A Trip Down The Island in 1991
Growing in Port Aransas Spread is almost 100 units
Former Miss Texas Serves as State Guardsman
By Mary Lou White Time moves forward and there are subtle changes, on a daily basis. I have written before about the uniqueness of Our Island and the close proximity of Port Aransas and Corpus Christi OTB. We are a blend between those two worlds….. the vacation destination of Port Aransas and the urban amenities of city dwelling, just across the Laguna Madre. For over a year, I have been tracking the active listings on Padre Island and Mustang Island. Month after month, they remained in close proximity, which I always found very interesting, because they represent two very different lifestyle choices. Then, at the end of July, those numbers started to shift and now we have a spread of almost 100 units. Clearly the inventory on Padre Island is declining, while Port Aransas is increasing. I wish I could say definitively what is contributing to that fact, but the result is prices are creeping up. The lowest priced detached home located on the Water is $299,000 and the lowest priced “water” lot is now $135,000. Being informed is a good thing...
Real Estate continued on A5
Inside the Moon
This house was used when the Dunn family ranched The Island and is the oldest house on The Island. Editor’s note: This is the second part of excerpts from the book Islands at the Edge of Time by author Gunner Hansen who travelled along down Padre Island in 1991. By Gunnar Hansen I climbed a dune. I could see several miles north and south. The oncestranded red jeep was moving north slowly. Across to the wet, the dunes undulated back and then the island leveled off. Laguna Madre was about a mile and half away. The land lay too low to see from his distance, but on the far side of the lagoon, somewhere to the northwest, was the mouth of Baffin Bay, where now extinct Kawakawa Indians had once lived. There were no trees here, just sand and grasses. On the dunes themselves rusted sea oats,
the first plants to establish themselves on the salty sand. There were others – goatfoot morning glory, fiddleleaf morning glory, and sea purslane, which helped hold the sand. I started to unload, pulling out the tent and poles, opening bags. But I was uncomfortable, still unused to the idea of traveling onto an alien beach. I stood there, hesitation, an uneasy tension in my solar plexus, a vague undistilled feeling. It was fear. But this was not rock fever, fear of being cut off from the mainland, of being stuck somewhere without escape. This was fear of being out here by myself, of being the person farthest out. Whatever was down the beach would meet me first. These were feelings I did not want to have.
On the Rocks A6
History continued on A
Island Legends
Roy Turnbull and the Island Cafe
By Jackie Bales
Did Ya’ Hear
Business Briefs
Pelican Club Closes Doors After Twelve Years By Mary Craft The venerable Pelican Club, located on the water in Port Aransas, is closing its doors after twelve years. The restaurant has been a landmark in the Port Aransas culinary array since owner Guy D. Carnathan moved his operation from Beulah’s Restaurant at the Tarpon Inn to the rented property in 2002. “We have cleared out at our current location while we are getting rejuvenated,” said Carnathan, who has been in the restaurant business in Port Aransas for twenty three years. He said his next step will be to take
Briefs continued on A3
“Quiet, he is going to hear us”. “I’m not making any noise, you are”. It was Joey McCarty and myself slithering like snakes under the low porch at the Island Food store. The year is 1961 and we are ten years old. We were in view of our target. It was just under the newspaper stand where we netted a couple bucks a day. It was the change that tourist dropped through the cracks in the porch. Just then we heard it. Step by step, it was Roy Turnbull stopping just above us. The dust from the porch fell in my eyes but I could not move. I was horrified. He knew we were there somewhere. We collected the coins and made our way back under the 100 feet of porch where we crawled out like ground hogs. There he was. He was terrifying and it was all we could do to out run him. He usually broke off his chase at Bill Moore’s where he would shout, “You kids quit stealing my money”. We didn’t consider it stealing because the coins were lost treasure and we were the only two kids skinny enough to go get it. We
Fishin' with Farah A7
Election 2014 A12-A15 Roy Turnbull considered ourselves independent business men. Roy was no fan of the longer hair styles of the day. In later years he would order my friends and I out of the Island Café until we combed our hair. Once the length touched the shoulders you were not allowed in. We had to work around this because the Island Café had the
Legends continued on A5
Live Music A18