The Tidelands Archive

The Port of San Diego plans to install a $250,000 replacement floating dock and gangway between Broadway Pier and Navy Pier for a pilot high-speed ferry to operate between Downtown and Oceanside, where another gangway will be built. The $5 million, state-funded, one-year demonstration ferry project would involve one round trip each weekday for up to 149 passengers on the one-hour ride.

The Port has authorized SCX Inc., which is opening offices in Solana Beach, to develop the ferry. Service would be by a single chartered hydrofoil from Pacific Marine of Honolulu, operated by Hornblower Cruises & Events. Connecting ground service would be offered through Cloud 9 Shuttle.

“Once we get the environmental clearance, we can go ahead with the infrastructure and getting the permits from the regional agencies,” says Stuart Farnsworth, maritime project analyst with the Port. He expects sea trials in April with service starting in May.

SCX President Stan Siegel has been promoting high-speed ferry service for Southern California for 10 years. He says this won’t be a slow boat to Coronado, where the ferry across the bay proceeds at about 10 knots. “We’ll be out in the ocean, going about 40 knots, and provide a very comfortable ride.”

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Continental Maritime, a 400-hand San Diego shipyard, is poised for a new captain. Northrop Grumman Corp. has tendered a $2.1 billion offer of cash and stock for Newport News Shipbuilding Inc., which itself acquired Continental four years ago, say officials at Continental and Newport News.

“We don’t anticipate any layoffs on this end,” says Jerri Fuller Dickseski, director of corporate communications for Newport News, which employs 18,000, mostly at its Virginia shipyard that built and recently refinished the nuclear refueling of the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Nimitz.

No nuclear work is done at Continental, whose current naval work is routine maintenance of the cruiser Stethem, says Lee Wilson, Continental v.p. and general counsel. He sees Continental’s workforce staying the same.

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With the aircraft carrier Stennis shipping out last month — two months earlier than scheduled — to support military operations in Afghanistan, San Diego’s other two flattops remain tied up at North Island for refurbishing. The newly refueled Nimitz is undergoing habitability improvements. Meanwhile, the conventionally powered Constellation is covered in scaffolding and undergoing the work typical of ships returning from the Persian Gulf. “They come back loaded with sand,” says Navy Chief Brian O’Rourke. “The work is getting all the sand sucked out of them.”

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Retired Adm. Robert J. “Rocky” Spane, whose more than 30 years in the Navy included a tour helming Pacific Fleet aircraft operations out of North Island, ships in as Coronado’s representative on the San Diego Port Commission Jan. 2. He relieves fellow retired Adm. Paul H. Speer, who will have served eight years. Spane, who was selected unanimously by the Coronado City Council, was chairman and remains on the board of Kansas City, Mo.-based Vanguard Airlines, which has no flights into the port-run San Diego International Airport.

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The San Diego Port Tenants Association also has a changing of the guard as Pete Litrenta, who is leaving Manchester Resorts, steps down as SDPTA chair. Nicholas Vitalich, owner of Chesapeake Fish Co., steps in after heading the association’s real estate committee. Just before leaving as chair, Litrenta asked the governor and legislature to commission an audit to ensure that the transfer of the airport from the Port to a new regional airport authority “will not have a negative effect on the Port’s non-airport general fund and, by implication, on the Port’s real estate and maritime tenants.”

As for Spane’s appointment, SDPTA Executive Director Richard Cloward effuses, “Here’s a guy who comes in not only with an aviation background but has a real estate background as well from his airline dealings.”

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The $3 billion merger of Royal Caribbean and Princess Cruises should cause hardly a ripple in the San Diego cruise business; no schedule changes are anticipated as a result of the deal. Although Princess ships make fewer than 10 calls through the year in San Diego, Royal Caribbean’s ships have been the Port’s most frequent visitors. The regular weekly calls of the line’s Viking Serenade at the B Street Cruise Ship Terminal will come to an end Jan. 30, however, when the ship goes out of service. The traffic will get bigger and better in May when Royal Caribbean launches its new Grandeur of the Seas, which will make 17 weekly San Diego cruises to the Mexican Riviera through October.

December is a busy month; scheduled to arrive are Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Star, Dec. 3; Holland America Line’s Statendam, Dec. 3, 13 and 23; Radisson Seven Seas Cruises’ Seven Seas Mariner, Dec. 22; Crystal Cruises’ Crystal Symphony, Dec. 22; Princess Cruises’ Crown Princess, Dec. 28; and Royal Caribbean International’s Vision of the Seas, Dec. 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30 and Viking Serenade, Dec. 5, 12, 19 and 26.

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National City’s Knight & Carver Yacht Center has named Luxury Yacht Group of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., its East Coast and Caribbean representative for refit and repair projects. “With this partnership we gain a sizable presence in South Florida, the world’s largest concentration of luxury yachts,” says Sam Brown, CEO of Knight & Carver, which employs 175 at its nine-acre boatyard.

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The parking lot in front of the San Diego International Airport Commuter Terminal has reopened but vehicles in the lot are subject to search. Motorists who decline will be directed to other lots.

Following its use during Thanksgiving week, the airport again will employ a phalanx of customer line service managers during the holiday travel period to help with the longer wait times and heightened security measures for passengers.