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  Sapphire 1802

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  New Construction at The Shores. 

   

  
  
  
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  5804 Yucca Circle

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> Family-Friendly Yacht Club Looking to Grow

 Its members have sailed all over the world.

But, for these folks who love sailing and boating, home will always be the Laguna Madre Yacht Club.

So, you didn’t know there was a yacht club located in Port Isabel?

Rather, did you think we were talking about the old Yacht Club Restaurant and Hotel on Yturria Street?

Well, there is a yacht club in PI and members are hoping to make a bigger name for themselves.

John Pinkerman is the commodore of the club and he knows the benefits and enjoyment members have. The group wants to share their knowledge and enjoyment of boating and sailing.

That is why they will hold an open house this Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at the club, which is located in South Pointe Marina.

The light brown building erected in the 1970s has a style similar to the Air Marine Homeland Security Building facing the Intercoastal Waterway.

But, it’s home to the Laguna Madre Yacht Club.

With about 75 members, the group is passionate about water activities in the Gulf of Mexico and Lower Laguna Madre.

Members have vast amounts of experience and different types of boats.

“We have people who have sailed all over the world,” Pinkerman said. “Others have sailed up the east coast of the U.S. and others do what is called the Great Loop.”

That 6,000 mile great loop is a water course going around through the northeast, down through the great lakes and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.

Boat sizes run from 19 feet all the way to 45 feet.

“Many people think you can’t have a sailboat here because it is to shallow,” Pinkerman said. “But, we have much knowledge of the water and there are a lot of places where you don’t have to worry about running the boat into the ground.”

Pinkerman cited the West Bay in front of Point Isabel High School.

“That area is really fine and deep for sailing,” he said.

But, don’t let the name trick you. It’s not just Bay sailing for these folks, including racing.

“Some contests are in the Laguna and some are as far as 150 miles off of shore,” Pinkerman said. “We have sailed races to Port Aransas.”

Pinkerman himself is a master mariner and is certified as a sailing instructor through the American Sailing Association.

He sailed as a youth and then got back into it more than 15 years ago. Pinkerman admitted he started out at ground zero, taking lessons and working on his boat.

“It is the most fun you can have without harming the environment you can have,” he said about sailing. “You are using the wind. Every day is new day. You can think you know a lot, but there’s the water current, the tide, the wind, the boat. There are a multitude of factors that go into sailing on a particular day.”

Pinkerman said he wishes more people would enjoy the sport, which he said many people think is for folks with money.

“We have people from all walks of life,” he said. “We have high school graduates to medical doctors.”

Members are from the Valley the Midwest and pretty much anywhere around the country and beyond.

Pinkerman said he hopes to grow the yacht club and the open house is the first step to make people more aware of the organization.

So, when you head over to the open house this weekend, don’t get confused.

This isn’t the place rumored to have been a stopping spot for Al Capone or a great place to have dinner back in the day.

Head over to South Pointe Marina. That’s where you’ll find the sailors you are looking for at the Laguna Madre Yacht Club.

What you need to know about the Laguna Madre Yacht Club?

* The Laguna Madre Yacht Club is a voluntary club focused on local boating activities, including sailboat racing and cruising.

* This year’s scheduled events include fall racing series and educational workshops on a variety of boating topics.

* The club emphasizes safe boating activities for the entire family.

* A monthly highlight is the social dinner held typically on the second Saturday of the month. Eight of these are held per year and are free to members.

* At least once a year, the club hosts sailing or boating groups from the area. For the last several years, the club has hosted the Race to the Border, which starts in Galveston and ends at the jetties of SPI.

How To Join

The club entertains membership applications from the public upon recommendation by two LMYC members.

The initiation fee is $100. Yearly dues are $300.

Flag Officers

Commodore – John Pinkerman

Rear Commodore – Lillian Renner

Treasurer – Cindy Ebess

Fleet Surgeon – Raul Rivet

Vice Commodore – Rick Eckstrom

Fleet Captain – Chris Hughston

Secretary – Caren Craig

Barrister - Steve Gano

By LISA SEISER, Editor

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> On the Hook: First Phase of RGV Reef Project Complete

The RGV Reef is about a quarter of the way done and, according to marine biologists, already teeming with juvenile red snapper and schools of bait fish.

So says Gary Glick, president of the nonprofit group Friends of RGV Reef, formed in 2015 with the goal of creating a 1,650-acre artificial reef off the coast of South Padre Island to substantially boost the local population of red snapper and other game fish.

To date the project has sunk two boats (a shrimp trawler and a tugboat) and roughly 4,000 tons of low-, medium- and high-relief material at the site, eight nautical miles off the coast and 14 nautical miles north of the Brazos Santiago Pass jetties. That material includes concrete pyramids, rip-rap, and box culverts weighing 26,000 pounds a piece, as well as 20 truckloads of concrete roof tiles.

According to scientists studying the project, in two years the amount of reef already deployed will have added 60,000 to 240,000 adult red snapper to the waters off South Padre Island, Glick said.

“We need to do this four or five more times and we will then have something that will begin to approach what they’ve done in Alabama, which throws off $50 million to $60 million of economic impact every year,” he said.

Glick is referring to Alabama’s artificial reef project, which began in the mid-1980s. With less than 4 percent of the Gulf coastline, that state went from no red snapper landings to hauling in 35 to 40 percent of the Gulf snapper catch each year, to enormous economic benefit, he said.

Alabama’s reef is quite a bit bigger than what’s planned for RGV Reef though it’s all high-relief, meant to attract mature red snapper from neighboring waters, Glick said. In contrast, RGV Reef’s combination of high, low and medium relief protects snapper from predators from the juvenile stage through adulthood, he said.

“We’re a nursery reef,” Glick said. “You can grow many times more snapper than you can attract. We can have that big economic impact with less area. Instead of trying to attract other people’s fish we’re going to grow our own.”

He said recreational red snapper fishing generates several times the economic force of commercial red snapper fishing, since people who come to fish also spend money on food and lodging, gas, tackle, charter trips, etc.

Glick estimated that Friends of RGV Reef has spent about $400,000 on deploying reef material so far, but said the group has managed to do it for roughly $100 a ton as opposed to the more typical $700 to $1,000 per ton.

“Contributions from multiple stakeholders and intensive management of the most efficient of the scientifically proven best practices have taken us far with what little money we have raised,” he said. “It’s making a virtue of necessity. We have a huge reef to fill and limited funds.”

Glick said the work so far wouldn’t have been possible without help from the Coastal Conservation Association-Building Conservation Trust, City of South Padre Island, Foremost Paving, Max Nichols, Port of Brownsville, South Point Marine, Texas International Fishing Tournament, and the marine science department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, among others.

EMR International Shipbreaking was a big help with deployments this summer, providing space for thousands of tons of reef material and loading it onto a Vietnam-era landing craft for transport to the reef site — all at a reasonable cost, Glick said.

“We’ve got all the stepping stones of habitat in place,” he said. “Now we’ve got to raise money and figure out how to do it better next time.”

Glick said it’s taken three years of intense effort to get to this point. While it seems like it’s taken forever, the experts see the project moving rapidly, he said.

“Marine biologists at UTRGV and Texas A&M at Corpus Christi and Galveston have already done several monitoring dives and are telling us that the juvenile recruitment is phenomenal and we’re well on our way to that 60,000 to 240,000 snapper in two years,” Glick said. “We’re well pleased with our progress.”

Roxanne Harris, president and CEO of the South Padre Island Chamber of Commerce, said her organization has been working closely with Friends of RGV Reef, and that local sport-fishing captains, boats and businesses are excited about the reef project.

“Although we don’t have hard numbers, certainly there will be increased interest in offshore fishing and particularly the red snapper,” she said. “The federal laws for red snapper are so restrictive, having habitat in state waters to attract fish and fishing tourists year round will be huge for us on South Padre Island.”

By STEVE CLARK Staff Writer

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> Hallo Wings Across South Padre Island

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