Inside the Moon
Farmers Market A7
Troop Support A7
Whoop it Up! A2
The
Issue 677
Island Moon
The voice of The Island since 1996
April 6, 2017
Around The Island
By Dale Rankin It was a cool wind in April that blew across our little sandbar this week. And when we say blew we mean it. It has been a windy week all around as boaters trying to watch the air show last weekend were anchored up in the shallows behind The Island where there wasn’t enough fetch and reach to create the pounding waves that beat up those brave enough to head out into the bay. Offshore fishing trips have been few and far between of late as swells of up to nine feet have been working their way across the Gulf. Closer to shore it’s been a good week for us as fishing is up, temperatures are moderate, and gas prices are holding steady.
March miracle We had a March Miracle this week as the nest of a Kemp’s Ridley turtle was found on South Padre Island, marking the first time ever a nest has been found on the Texas Coast during the month of March. He was a little late for Spring Break and that might be somewhat of a miracle in itself. While the hypothesis has yet to be actually tested here’s guessing that nesting sea turtles and Spring Breakers would be a volatile mix. It’s the turtle season everybody so keep an eye out and call Donna if you find one.
Fishing A11
Free
Weekly
FREE
Details of Planned Island Development Restaurants, live music venue, retail, residential, marina under design
By Dale Rankin Island developer Paul Schexnailder spoke to the Island Strategic Action Committee on Tuesday and filled in details of his plans for Island development on the 104 acre site around Lake Padre including a Hilton Hotel, multi-family and single-family residential, a marina, and a restaurant and live music venue developed by Lulu properties which is owned by the Lucy Buffett, the sister of musician Jimmy Buffett. The largest part of the current phase of development is on the 104 acres on the Lake Padre side of SPID where in recent months Schexnailder has moved, “almost one million acres of sand and created 10,000 feet of new bulkheads.” Those plans include:
Conceptual drawing of Lulu's in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina A 220 room Hilton Hotel including retail space and meeting facilities just north of the canal leading to the planned Park Road 22/SPID Water Exchange Bridge. “That facility is currently under design,” Schexnailder said. “When the design is done we will permit the road to it and the utilities.
Lulu’s campus, which will include a seafood restaurant, live music year round operated by Lulu’s properties, which is owned by Lucy Buffett, the sister of musician Jimmy Buffett. The company currently has similar facilities in Gulf Shores, Alabama; Destin, Florida; and a new
Development cont. on A 16
Food Truck Invasion!
away everybody. It kicks off in Port A on the weekend of April 21 and is always a great weekend on the sand. There are three things on our Island that never get old, finding a sand dollar, seeing a dolphin, and viewing the sand sculptures in Port Aransas. Get out there and enjoy the great weather everybody, if you don’t get blown to Swinney Switch, we’ll see you at the Food Truck Festival, and say hello if you see us Around The Island.
By Dale Rankin The second round of balloting for two open positions on the sevenmember Padre Isles Property Owners Board of Directors wrapped up Saturday with one candidate reaching the (formerly) required majority of votes to claim a seat on the board, and a third (and presumably) final round of voting for the final seat set for later this month to determine the winner of the seventh seat. Two candidates are on the ballot: Second-place finisher Carter Tate and fourth place finisher George Potter. Former candidate and board member Stan Hulse has withdrawn from the race. See the complete ballot in this issue. The board voted Saturday to return to a plurality of votes for the third round rather than requiring a majority which has failed to fill the two seats in the first two rounds of voting. In the first round no candidates reached the majority, in the second round Saturday new member Marvin Jones was the sole candidate to reach the 50.1% plateau with 869 votes.
The Island United Political Action Committee will hold its endorsement night for candidates in the May 6 city Special Election on Monday, April 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the Holiday Inn.
Dune water
SandFest 2017 is only two weeks
Voting for POA Board Enters Round Three
Mayor Endorsement Forum Monday
Sales of beach permits for Spring Break 2017 took a huge leap as the dollar figure jumped from $14,000 in 2016 to $44,000 in 2017. Officials attribute the jump mostly to an aggressive sales team this year more so than a big jump in Spring Breakers.
SandFest!
Third time is the charm
POA cont. on A4
Spring Break follow-up
We had a call this week from a reader who witnessed a Spring Breaker in Port Aransas using water from a hole dug in the area behind the dunes to take a sponge bath. While we don’t encourage anyone to start digging holes behind the dunes it does bring to mind a little known fact about our Island that ranchers and before them the Karankawa Indians knew well. If you dig only a few feet down anywhere on our Island you will hit potable semi-fresh water. It won’t taste too good but it was used to water livestock here for years and apparently now to bathe the great unwashed. The Island was considered great ranchland and the Dunn Ranch which operated on The Island for many years used shallow tanks to water cattle and as a bonus no fences were needed and there was plenty of grass. The water is brackish which means it contains from 1,000 parts per million of total dissolved solids (the top end of fresh water) to 10,000 parts per million (seawater is about 35,000 parts per million). About a dozen homes on The Island use shallow wells jetted out with pressurized water to water their yards.
Hayes Carll A18
All registered Island voters are encouraged to attend and vote for the candidate of their choice. The candidate will be given an opportunity to address the crowd and at the end of the night the votes from the membership will be tallied and the top vote getter will receive the endorsement of the membership.
They will come rolling in from OTB Saturday morning ready to feed a hungry Island!The 2nd Annual Corpus Christi Food Truck Festival is coming to The Island and will take place in the parking lot at Schlitterbahn Resort this Saturday, April 8 from noon to midnight. More than forty trucks are scheduled to be on hand, along with an arts and crafts alley, and other activities for kids of all ages. There will also be live music on the main stage. The event is free and open to the public. A little Island history
Bring your voter registration card with you to speed up the process. Candidates have until March 27 to file. You must be registered by April 6 to vote. Early voting takes place April 24-May 2, and Election Day is May 6. The IUPAC was formed to unite the approximately 7200 Island voters behind candidates in city races.
Legend of the Nicaragua
Rusting hulk of a ship from a bygone era collects stories on PINS It was in the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance where it was said, “"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." When it comes to the rusting hull of a ship still awash in the surf just north of the Mansfield Channel the fact is much less intriguing that the legend, so we will print both. We get regular questions from visitors to Padre Island National Seashore about the wrecked of the Nicaragua as her boilers are still visible (some of the time) above the surf line just north of the channel. First, let’s get the legend out of the way. There is no known evidence to support the story that the ship was a treasure ship, a gun runner for Pancho Villa, nor any other Mexican revolutionary for that matter. The truth is that she was a lumbering lumber carrier that just simply got caught in a storm and brought too close to the skinny water and floundered.
The ship The steel-hull ship was white in color and built in 1891 in Bergen, Norway. Her plans show that she was 190 feet overall and Lloyd's of London listed her at 611 gross tons. She was the first ship to enter the new Port of Beaumont. In October 1912 she left Tampico bound for Port Arthur carrying cotton and various other (legal) cargo. After five days at sea on October 16, 1912, she sank during a great storm that sank vessels all over the Gulf of Mexico, and sent her to the bottom near the Devil's Elbow About fifty miles down Padre Island National Seashore, a place where converging currents make it the repository for flotsam and jetsam from all over the Gulf of Mexico. For ten days the ship’s fate was unknown until on October 22, when members of the crew turned up in Port Aransas in a small boat and were rescued by crew members from
the U.S. Coast Guard Life Boat Station. The captain's story was that the Nicaragua was due east of Padre Island when it was hit by the hurricane which was ravaging ship traffic in the Gulf. During the storm a strained rudder chain broke, and the ship, at the mercy of the storm, was driven aground in the breakers. The captain and nine crew members manned one of the ship's boats and headed northward, battling sporty seas for five days before they were spotted by the coast guard. They said twelve other men had headed south in two other boats, hoping they could reach a Texas port. Before the crew was rescued, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Windom had left Galveston at the request of the Mexican owners, to search for the Nicaragua with the hope that it would find the remaining twelve but did not meet with success, The worse
was feared until October 29 when six sailors walked up to the Port Isabel life boat station, having walked 54 miles along Padre. They said that no one had left the Nicaragua after
History cont. on A4