Transportation

One of the largest luxury sailboats in the world spent the weekend in Auke Bay.

The 295-foot, three-mast Athena has 2,500 square feet of sailing power.  It was one of several large yachts that dominated the Statter Harbor breakwater over the weekend.

The schooner is reportedly owned by James H. Clark, a founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics. He helped design the ship, built by Royal Huisman Shipyard in the Netherlands.

The British-flagged Vibrant Curiosity anchored outside the breakwater. The 280-foot super-yacht was built by Oceanco Shipyard, also in the Netherlands.  It has a swimming pool on the deck, sleeps 18 passengers and a crew of 26.  Its MTU diesel engines cruise up to 20 knots and can go 5,500 miles on one fill up at an average speed of 14 knots.

The Vibrant Curiosity was in Seattle’s Lake Union in mid-June, where KING-TV reported it was being readied for a cruise to Alaska.

German billionaire Reinhold Wuerth reportedly purchased the Vibrant Curiosity for $100 million.

The Lady Christine was the yacht with the helicopter seen in Auke Bay.

The 223-foot motor yacht also was designed and built in the Netherlands, and launched in 2010.

According to Charterworld.com, it’s owned by Scottish businessman Lord Irvine and Lady Christine Laidlaw, who have built a number of sailing and motor yachts.  He apparently has some international racing triumphs and has been described as a “Monaco tax exile.”

 

The Cayman Islands-flagged 147-foot Cracker Bay used to be called the Campbell Bay. It’s most recent claim to fame came during the last presidential race, when GOP candidate Mitt Romney used it for an exclusive event to thank supporters who’d contributed at least $1 million to his campaign, according to ABC News and Mother Jones. It’s owned by Gary Morse, developer of the Villages retirement community in Florida.

 

 

A bill making it easier to build a road to Prince of Wales Island mines has gotten some attention in the nation’s Capitol.

Congressman Don Young’s measure would allow construction linking the island’s road system to the Niblack mine. The copper, zinc, gold and silver prospect is under development.

The bill would allow that road to continue to the Bokan Mountain rare-earth-element mine. Both are in the Southeast part of island, to the west of Ketchikan.

It would be built in an inventoried roadless area, where construction is restricted. As a result, the Forest Service opposes it.

Young questioned the agency’s Leslie Weldon during a hearing before the House Public Lands Committee on Friday.

“Do you agree that if the road were built, it would help local Prince of Wales Island residents commute to the mine and live and work on the island?” he asked.

“We agree that it’s important that there be economic opportunity for the residents in Craig and Thorne Bay. But we think that there are more economically efficient ways of being able to transport those workers to the mine site,” Weldon answered. (Watch the entire exchange.)

She said the administration prefers mine owners boat people to a dock near the mine.

She said it would be cheaper and safer.

“It would be very expensive to build these roads because of the difficult terrain they would cross,” Weldon said. “Existing roads were built as logging roads and it’s not clear whether they’re suitable for frequent use or whether the owners of these roads would support such use and accept any related liability risk.”

Young said a road would allow for shipment of equipment and other goods.

He also said it would cut pollution and power use.

“We have an administration that desires to have clean air. And we have hydropower abundance there. But we can’t move it unless we have a transmission corridor, which would include the roads,” Young said.

The bill’s next step is a markup before the full House Natural Resources Committee.

Similar legislation is in the Senate, cosponsored by Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich. It has not had a hearing. (Read about that bill and related issues.)

The measures are supported by the Alaska Forest Association, Alaska Miners Association and Southeast Conference, among others.

Read about environmental concerns about the Niblack and Bokan mines.

Downtown motorists will soon have to add an additional step to their parking regime.

Instead of just registering a vehicle at a parking machine, they also will have to put the receipt on the dashboard before continuing on with business. It’s called pay and display.

The shift in parking practice is due to the unreliability of the current system run by Aparc Parking Solutions. Information being plugged into the parking machines isn’t getting accurately communicated to the handheld devices used by Juneau Police Department parking enforcement.

Community Service Officer Bob Dilley says this has made it difficult to issue citations.

“Intermittently we would lose communications so if you do that and then somebody presents you with evidence later that says, yes, they did register, then you really can’t trust the system and we as enforcement officers want to make sure we’re not issuing citations in error.”

This is not the only issue making it hard for parking enforcement to do their job. The city and borough of Juneau is currently transitioning to handling its own parking violations instead of sending them to a district court. When the transition is complete, enforcement will once again leave citations on vehicles.

In this interim period, Dilley says people should continue to use the parking machines and follow parking ordinances. He says downtown parking remains  problematic.

“I think there’s a certain percentage of the population knows that we’re not giving out parking tickets and is probably somewhat taking advantage of that.”

Ben Lyman is senior planner with the CBJ Community Development Department. He says on-street parking is not the only option downtown. Marine Parking Garage and the Downtown Transportation Center Garage are geared for drivers looking to park for more than two hours.

“The two facilities combined are almost always half full and that means we’ve got about 300 empty parking spaces in those two facilities.”

At the moment, CBJ does not know when pay and display will begin, but the Parks and Recreation Department will provide public education on how the new system will work. There will be a grace period before enforcement starts issuing citations.

The new pay-and-display parking method will still allow two hours of free parking.

The latest design for new shuttle ferries includes a covered car deck. But it doesn’t address some other concerns, such as minimal food service.

What’s called a design study report for the Alaska Class Shuttle Ferries was released Monday. Two ships are planned for Juneau, Haines and Skagway sailings.

Alaska Marine Highway spokesman Jeremy Woodrow says the report calls for a fully enclosed car deck. Earlier plans left the rear part open.

“The point of shielding the car deck from extreme weather really isn’t the main reason behind it. More of a reason is that the additional costs really wouldn’t be that much to the point where it would be worthwhile leaving it open,” Woodrow says.

Longtime passengers and community leaders objected to an open deck, saying salt spray and ice would damage vehicles.

Skagway tugboat captain Mike Korsmo serves on the state’s Marine Transportation Advisory Board. He likes the change.

“That’s a good thing. I think that was kind of a clear message that they got, that people didn’t want to see an open car deck,” Korsmo says.

Size and capacity requirements have not changed much since the last proposal.

Shuttle ferries would be 280 feet long, larger than the small ferry LeConte, which sails the route part of the year.

They will have indoor seating for 300 passengers and parking for about 50 cars and trucks.

A larger ferry design discarded late last year called for several small quiet rooms for families, the sick, or the elderly.

That’s been dropped. But Woodrow says some options remain.

“There’s going to be a theater lounge as well as a children’s area, a family area. And then there’s going to be what’s called a library or a quiet room as well that kind of acts as … the observation lounge, which tends to be a quieter area,” Woodrow says.

Plans continue to call for a small food court and vending machines.

Korsmo understands the need to save money, but says passengers will miss having a full kitchen.

“I took pictures this winter of the lineups on the LeConte of people waiting for food. So I’m sure it’s going to be somewhat of a letdown to the traveling public, especially in the wintertime,” Korsmo says.

The ships are designed to sail 12-hour days, not overnight. The design will include bow and stern doors to allow faster roll-on, roll-off loading and unloading. Side doors will allow docking at more terminals.

The latest cost estimate is $112.2 million for both ferries. That’s $5 million more than the previous figure, but still below the $117 million allocated by the Legislature.

In addition to Lynn Canal, the shuttle ships could sail to northern Southeast villages or Prince William Sound communities.

Public hearings are planned for August 20th, 21st and 22nd in Juneau, Skagway and Haines.

The Federal Aviation Administration is increasing the amount of hours required to become a copilot for a commercial air carrier.

The change goes into effect August 1.

Copilots – technically known as first officers – will now be required to hold an air transport pilot license.

It will take 1,500 hours to qualify for that. And that’s quite the increase – up from today’s standard, 250 hours.

“That doesn’t mean your first officer only had 250 hours,”  Matthew Macri, the director of operations for PenAir, said.

He says most first officers have well-exceeded the 250 hour mark, and the change won’t be too onerous.

“We’ve known this has been coming long enough that for the past two years most carriers have been able to adapt their hiring practices so it wouldn’t be a catastrophic event where they’d have to furlough half of their crew force until they have enough flight time,” Macri said.

Congress mandated the FAA change the requirements after a regional carrier in the northeast crashed killing 50 people. The FAA blamed a lack of pilot training in that crash.

A state antitrust lawyer says a proposed merger may pit the commercial shipping equivalents of David against Goliath in Southeast Alaska.

The plan, announced in April, involves three shipping companies: Seattle-based Alaska Marine Lines, Seattle-based Northland Services, and Sitka-based Samson Tug and Barge. AML’s parent company, Lynden Inc., wants to buy AML competitor Northland Services.

If that was the end of the plan, Lynden would have a monopoly on shipping in Southeast.

It’s Assistant Attorney General Ed Sniffen’s job to review the merger plan, negotiate fixes to the anticompetitive parts, and if necessary, fight it out in court.

“Competing with someone like Lynden is a tough thing to do,” he said Thursday, speaking to the Juneau Chamber of Commerce. “I mean, they’ve been around, they’re big, they know what they’re doing. You get someone like, you know, Samson coming in, trying to swing at Goliath a little bit. And you want to make sure they’ve got a big hammer so when they hit him, he feels it.”

Though Sitka-based, Samson right now doesn’t operate elsewhere in Southeast. Samson Vice President Cory Baggen says the company only has about 10 employees in the panhandle, all of them in Sitka. However, Samson announced plans to expand its service in Southeast the same day Lynden announced its intent to buy Northland.

AML has been touting that expansion as the antidote to its Southeast monopoly.

“I think that the competition is going to be as stiff … as it is today with Northland, and normally competition tends to keep the prices down,” said AML President Kevin Anderson. “You know, we’re not going into this thinking we’re going to lose any customers. And if we have to battle for them to keep them, so be it.”

Many details of the vetting and deal making are under wraps – at least until the Department of Law files something in court – but the parties have essentially said that Northland won’t be wholly absorbed by Lynden. Instead, Northland may be carved up between Lynden and Samson in service of the smaller company’s Southeast expansion.

For example, Baggen said Samson is eyeing Northland’s current location on Channel Drive as its future port in Juneau. And if everything goes forward, she says her company will probably pick up 40 or 50 of Northland’s employees in Southeast.

That last “if” brings it back to the Department of Law. Baggen says Samson won’t start investing and expanding until the merger’s greenlit. But the merger may not be greenlit until AML actually has new competition in Southeast.

“I don’t want to set it up, and put a warehouse in with 25 doors and be all ready for nothing, and the consent degree doesn’t go through,” Baggen said. “So, it’s kind of a chicken-egg thing right now.”

AML’s Kevin Anderson says his company’s intent with the purchase of Northland is not to monopolize shipping in Southeast, but to expand in Seattle by acquiring Northland’s property there, and to become a full service Alaska seafood packager, carrier and marketer.

“The thing that Northland does extremely well is that they’re out in the west –Bristol Bay, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor, I mean, some of the biggest fish runs in all of Alaska –we couldn’t play in that game,” he said.

He also says it’s been an “extremely painful” process.

“We’ve been involved in this process now for, I don’t know, close to a year. And it doesn’t seem like we’re getting any closer. It’s just one thing after another. And the amount of time and effort it takes on a lot of people’s part to put something like this together is unbelievable,” Anderson said.

Sniffen says the Department of Law hopes to have something filed in October, which would open a 60-day public comment period. Ultimately, a judge would have to sign off of on the deal. If the department can meet that timeline, Sniffen says the parties would likely know by the new year if the merger can go through.

As far as her company’s characterization as David, Baggen was lukewarm.

“I think that the history of Southeast Alaska has shown that small companies can be viable and successful and can do a really good job here, so, even though it might be a good – sort of a good analogy, I think, I think it’s OK,” she said.

That history includes echoes of another David and Goliath story. When Lynden, originally a trucking company, first got into Alaska shipping, Anderson says Lynden wasn’t taken seriously because Foss Maritime was the giant.