It looks like smoother sailing ahead for boaters going in and out of Huntington Harbour, at least the more experienced ones.
For decades, when recreational boats passed through Anaheim Bay on their way between the ocean and harbor, they shared channel waters with U.S. warships loading and unloading munitions at the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach dock.
That meant when a Navy ship was arriving or leaving, the flow of civilian watercraft was halted for 45 minutes or more. On a summer weekend, when more than 50 boaters can be traversing the channel hourly, that could mean a bit of a traffic jam. The new route also is more direct, shaving five minutes or so off the trip.
The Navy opened that new public channel on Thursday, Jan. 21, giving civilian boaters their own dedicated route that largely keeps them out of the areas used by the Navy. Because of the pandemic there was no formal event to mark the change, simply a lunch hour moving of the buoy line to allow access to the new channel and to block passage through the old one.
But it caused a bit of excitement among some of the few weekday boaters there.
“We were probably the first boat through,” said retiree Joe Rovinelli while washing down his 26′ Seaswirl Striper at Sunset Aquatic Marina. A regular user of the ocean entrance who’d spent the morning fishing with his wife, Rovinelli said he’s been following the project as it’s developed over the past couple years.
“It’s a blessing,” he said.
The new channel is part of a 5-year, $150 million construction project begun in January 2020 that will also result in a new, 1,110 square-foot Navy pier extending toward the ocean, replacing the current wharf that sits parallel to the shore. Additionally, plans call for a new breakwater to protect the pier.
The project will allow the Navy to dock 840-foot amphibious assault ships, which are too big to fit at the existing dock and currently are loaded by helicopters offshore of Camp Pendleton. And it will allow the Navy to dock and load two medium-sized ships simultaneously.
But those aren’t the only reasons traffic at the new munitions pier will be increasing.
The Navy is reassigning part of its fleet in the Atlantic, where 60% of its ships have been based, to the Pacific, which will eventually be home to about 60% of the vessels. The shift comes because the Pacific is gaining importance in terms of commerce and the possibility of military conflict, according to Naval Weapons Station spokesman Gregory Smith.
Currently, the wharf sees about 40 visits a year from predominantly San Diego-based ships, which average about three days in the bay each stop. The weapons station is already the biggest ammunition-loading facility for the Pacific fleet and will continue that status when the number of annual visits increase to 50 or 60, Smith said. That number could increase further if there’s a conflict in the Pacific, he said.
Noise, turtles
Huntington Harbour veterans like Rovinelli are celebrating the new route, but boat captain Bobby Lienau urged less experienced boaters to be careful because both sides of the new channel are lined with boulders (the old route had rocks on just one side) and the current is stronger.
“It’s a little more dangerous,” said Lienau, who owns a small boating company and made his first trip through the channel Thursday. “It’s something to pay attention to.”
While the new channel on the inner part of the bay will minimize the mingling of military and civilian vessels, the traffic will continue to share the harbor entrance, where boats pass between two jetties. That means there will still be some delays, although significantly less than before.
“It will take awhile for our security personnel to determine the optimal closure times based on the new public boat route, so delays will likely decrease over time,” Smith said.
While the channel is now open, work on armoring the sides of the new passage will continue for several months, he said. As for the pier and the rest of the construction, a 2024 completion is expected.
At a public briefing in 2018, some bayfront residents expressed concern that their views would be obstructed by larger ships docked at the new pier in the middle of the bay, and some also expressed concern about construction noise. Dredging has been occurring around the clock and is expected to be completed by fall. That’s about the same time contractors will begin installation of 900 pilings.
The daytime-only pile driving is expected to continue for about a year. In both cases, the Navy aims to keep the noise within the boundaries of surrounding levels, where traffic is usually the primary source. In the year since work commenced, noise levels have drawn only about 10 complaints, Smith said.
“We worked with our contractor to minimize noise by changing dredge positioning and operations,” he said. “We also had noise monitors take readings to ensure that noise levels remain at or below background levels.”
The Navy also is keeping an eye on the area’s marine life. That includes the endangered Pacific green sea turtle, which forage on eelgrass in the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge and access those wetlands by passing through Anaheim Bay from the ocean.
“We have environmental monitors on site through the duration of the project, and no changes in sea turtle behavior have been reported,” Smith said. “However, our environmental staff informs me that turtle movements are normally limited during the winter when water temps are colder.”
The Surfrider Foundation endorsed the Navy’s construction choice, in large measure because other options would have disrupted a surf break just south of the bay.
And most boaters, including Rovinellli and Lienau, are happy to have the quicker route. Rovinelli also noted that he and his wife had caught — and released — calico bass, sand bass and mackerel on Thursday.
A good day of fishing?
“Any day of fishing,” he quipped, “is a good day of fishing.”
Source: Orange County Register
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