Boater protests Marco ordinance by breaking it

Dave Dumas is sitting off the dock of Smokehouse Bay, wasting time.

The 64-year-old Marco Island resident has anchored his 42-foot cruising trawler named Kinship less than 300 feet from land with the intention to break a nine-month-old Marco city law.

According to an ordinance passed after almost two years of wrangling, Dumas will violate the law once he has anchored Kinship for 12 consecutive hours. Dumas believes the Marco ordinance violates state statutes on boaters’ navigation rights. He’s here to protest the law and lobby for a change.

“I’m looking forward to seeing this end positively,” Dumas said.

Dumas set up his boat about 2 p.m. Tuesday and is waiting there, expecting a response from the Marco Island Police Department. Until that happens, he’s hosting friends and supporters.

Lee Henderson, 68, came aboard around 3:30 p.m. offering Budweisers and Coors to Dumas and Lee Oldershaw, 69. Dumas, wearing a white T-shirt depicting a fish skeleton with “Bad to the Bone” printed on it, wasn’t worried about staying out long on the boat. Kinship has two air conditioning units, running water and a bookshelf on which Dumas placed the two books he’s reading, “The March” by E.L. Doctorow and “McNally’s Dilemma” by Lawrence Sanders.

Dumas, who lives on Marco but travels up and down the Eastern Seaboard, called the boat, a “floating cottage.”

Photo by David Ahntholz .da

Dave Dumas and Lee Oldershaw, both of Marco, anchor the boat Kinship in Smokehouse Bay on Marco Island in January 2007 purposely violating a city ordinance restricting anchoring, which was determined to be unconstitutional leading to a statewide defense of boaters' rights. Marco spent about two and a half years attempting to defend the ordinance and held a series of closed-door meetings--- the transcripts of which are now raising questions about whether officials followed open government and public records laws.

Later, Herman Diebler, a 68-year-old member of the city’s waterways advisory committee joined them.

“This city is not boater unfriendly,” Diebler said, “it’s boater hostile.”

Police Chief Roger Reinke, who helped craft the original ordinance, learned the boaters were intending to violate the law a month ago when he received an e-mail from Oldershaw. He said Tuesday afternoon that he would not speculate on how the department would respond to the incident.

“How would we handle a murder case if it would happen tomorrow?” Reinke asked. “What I mean is that each situation is fact specific and no violation has occurred at this point. We have all the enforcement options here provided under the law.”

Listening to a police scanner in his office, Reinke sighed when he heard an officer describing a “suspicious boat.” It turned out not to be Dumas’ and Reinke turned down the scanner’s volume.

When asked if he was disappointed by the boaters, Reinke said he wasn’t.

“I may disagree with someone’s position, but I learned long ago not to become upset by things like this as a police officer,” he said.

Bill McMullan co-chairs a citizen’s group, Marco Waterways Organization, that lobbied the city for the ordinance, which also restricts visiting boaters to six-day stays with proof of a sewage pumpout. He was saddened.

Submitted photo

The Marco Island Police Department issues a verbal warning to a boat intentionally violating a city anchoring ordinance at noon Wednesday. The boaters, who have been in Smokehouse Bay near the Esplanade since 2 p.m. Tuesday, later received a written warning. The boaters claim the city ordinance goes against state law.

“For a few local residents to put the interests of a few transient boaters ahead of Marco residents and taxpayers is shameful,” he said. “We don’t encourage anyone to violate the laws of the land and we’re sad to see that happening.”

According to state statute, city police can penalize the boaters anywhere from issuing them a citation to arresting them. If convicted in court, there’s a maximum $500 fine and 60-day imprisonment for offenders.

Such battles between city law, state law and regulatory organizations like the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission are occurring around Florida, Oldershaw said. He hoped that this Marco incident would be a test case that would settle the issue.

“Nobody goes out and challenges anything like this,” he said, sipping his Budweiser. “We’re a bunch of old, retired guys who have some time on our hands and who want to fix an injustice we see.”