The last in a series of articles on the Ocean Shores Marina:

Larry Thevik is a bitter disappointment . . . to anyone in search of the stereotypical fisherman.

Hearing that this guy has been crab fishing out of the Ocean Shores Marina for 38 years, one might expect a surly, grizzled, growling, patch-eyed, parrot-on-the-shoulder sailor.

2008 for 2009 tax

Ocean Shores Real & Personal Assessed Value: $1,361,960,357

Port of Grays Harbor levy: $.3454

Ocean Shores contribution to Port: $470,420

Ocean Shores Mayor Dean Bunkers (with Ken Lanfear, the Public Works director) was at the Port of Grays Harbor this morning. He used the Coastal Communities of Southwest Washington meeting as an opportunity to lobby for assistance with the Jetty, which was identified by the Army Corps of Engineers as “a structure we’re closely monitoring”; Jetty area residents Cathy and Don Eggleston, who have been promoting the need to protect their area from flooding, were in attendance at the Port office in Aberdeen. The Corps will be doing an on-site inspection of the Jetty in April. “It’s amazing how much property (near the Jetty) has eroded away in the last five or six years,” Bunkers told the group, which included County Commissioner Mike Wilson, Kevin Varness of Grays Harbor County Public Services and Gary Nelson, executive director of the Port.

Bunkers also used the opportunity to lobby for “the need to get the channel in front of the Marina dredged.” He added, “I’ve had some communication with the Quinaults . . . it would certainly be beneficial to us to form some kind of partnership.”

The Quniault Nation owns the Marina.

The meeting also covered the need for dredging in the Westport area, and projects in Long Beach and Ilwaco.

source http://www.co.grays-harbor.wa.us/info/assessor/Index.asp

2007 for 2008 Tax:

Ocean Shores assessed value $1,326,813,969

Port of Grays Harbor tax collection $2,030,883

Port levy  $.3703

Ocean Shores 2008 total to Port: $491,318

In 2008, the Port of Grays Harbor collected just over $2 million in taxes. Based on a property assessment of $1.3 billion, and a $.3703 levy, Ocean Shores’ total contribution to the Port was just under $500,000, or a little less than a quarter of the Port’s tax base.

“What the hell are we getting for it?” asks an angry Don Williams. The Ocean Shores home owner then answers his own question:

“We’re not getting anything for it.”

City Councilman Dick Skewis isn’t just mad about this, he’s fighting mad:

“We pay a half million dollars a year to the Port and get nothing for it,” Skewis said

“Maybe we could form our own port district . . .  and secede from the Port of Grays Harbor.”

And this isn’t nearly as bad as it gets, during minus-tides:

The dock that El Matador used, for years:

from this week’s North Coast News

Part I of a Marina series: Unless there’s a miracle, the Ocean Shores-Westport Ferry won’t run again, this summer.

Locals will tell you the Ocean Shores Marina was really something, back in the 80s. Fishing boats, charters . . .  Well, things slowly went downhill, and for the last decade, the Marina, owned by the Quinault Indian Nation since 1996, has been treading water. 

There wasn’t much going on, commercially, just Larry Thevik’s lone-wolf crabbing boat. But at least there was the ferry, a summer Ocean Shores-Westport run that was a delight for locals and tourists, and a watery bridge between the two cities.

Last summer, for the first time in more than 20 years, the ferry stopped running. Bill Walsh, the owner of El Matador, said the water in the Marina was just too shallow.

And it wasn’t just a one-year hiatus. Save an almost miraculous set of circumstances, the ferry is dead this year, too.