Issue 696 the Island Free
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Inside the Moon August PIBA Mixer A2 Texas Legends A7 Traveling Moon A9 Majek Tournament A11 Happy B-day Tony A16 Issue 696 The Island Free The voiceMoon of The Island since 1996 August 17, 2017 Weekly www.islandmoon.com FREE Around The A Look Back Island at Hurricane By Dale Rankin Hurricane Franklin decided to go Allen the Last ashore down Mexico way late last week but managed to push water a Big Storm to Hit couple of steps up the Michael J. Ellis Seawall. The storm didn’t even bother The Island to blow the palm trees flat on our little sandbar but by Sunday afternoon the Since 1851 Texas wind was blowing hard enough it could lift a beach tent tied to a MINI has been hit by 10 Cooper, well, at least according to one eyewitness who also reported major storms with that the wind blew so hard there were whitecaps in her swimming pool. 90 percent of those She had us going for little bit there but then, as storytellers often do, she coming between went too far and claimed that the ants were using toothpicks to surf. August 15 and Toothpicks are round, not even an ant can surf on a toothpick. September 15 August is National Golf Month and By Dale Rankin according to the press release that We are in the heart of Hurricane means you get three Mulligans per Season 2017 so it is a good time to round, so we got that going for us. take a look back at the last big storm Our friend Sharon took her little dog to hit the area; Hurricane Allen which Jack to a vet OTB last week and when Something is Attacking struck in August of 1980. she went to pick him up it turned out The eye of Hurricane Allen hit Port they had given him to another owner! Mansfield in the early morning of Seems like Jack would have said Dasmarinas Dogs August 10. The Island was in the something, or at least the Stoopid northeast quadrant of the storm, the Human what got the wrong pooch. By Dale Rankin size of the attacker at about 150 portion where the counterclockwise Jack is a good boy and maybe the pounds, much larger than even an In the long dry days of an Island winds and tidal surge are highest. The trade in was a PITA and the owner adult male coyote. They found the summer it is not unusual to hear storm put a 17-foot surge tide on The was going for an exchange. All the dog’s body the next morning on the reports of coyotes roaming our streets. Island and destroyed the seawall and more reason to go to Dr. Christi, her golf course. Other eyewitnesses have But it is unusual to have multiple also dumped almost 20 inches of rain. office knows which dog goes with reported seeing a large canine in the reports of coyote(s) attacking dogs in which human. Dasmarinas area during morning backyards, but that has been the case jogs. There have also been sightings Then there is this. We Moon in recent days as at least three dogs of wild hogs reported in that area in Monkeys hit the Angry Marlin for have been attacked and killed in the recent weeks, as well as in the area happy hour last week and somehow area around Dasmarinas backing up around Lake Padre. left Scoop Craft locked in the car. to the golf course. Those child safety seats are a booger Another eyewitness reports: “I can Two small dogs were attacked and and moved so fast. I stopped the car, folks. All came out unscathed but confirm the hybrid coyote or whatever killed inside a fenced yard and a rolled down the window and was with a good story to tell. Those signs super wolf this is, as we almost hit third, a 40-pound Cavalier King able to stare at the animal as it stared along the highway don’t warn you it with our car back in June. Night Charles Spaniel was being walked back at us from the brush/tall grass. about leaving a human locked in a car had just fallen, and this thing darted by its owner on a 75-pound test leash Biggest ears I have ever seen... huge but maybe they should. Or maybe a from a house on Dasmarinas, across tethered to a stake when an animal the coyote wolf. Just an FYI - this animal cocktail napkins, “Did You Leave a the street over to the golf course. My owner described as a “huge wolf like is definitely real.” Human Locked in Your Car?!!” sister in-law and myself thought it thing” snatched the dog, uprooting was a deer because it was so large ISAC in August the stake. The owner estimated the Coyotes cont. on A4 The monthly meeting of the Island Strategic Action Committee was last week and there was some good news Island ImprovementsWelcome for boaters. There is money to address the sandbar known as the last 600 Michael J. Ellis Seawall in 1980 feet of the Packery Channel, less than after Hurricane Allen four feet deep and causing boats to hit bottom. City staff reported that there Bob Hall Pier was nearly destroyed is $4 million available for the job and and the JFK Causeway itself was District Four City Councilman Greg inundated cutting The Island off from Smith has instructed the city staff to the mainland which eventually led to start the paperwork for dredging the the raising of the causeway. When a canal, hopefully by the end of 2017. six-foot concrete barrier placed in the The problem arose after sloppy centerline of the causeway to prevent Excavation work has begun to traffic accidents was overturned language in the last two dredging connect the new canals on the The sprinkler system designed to fight the flying sand around Lake projects in the Packery failed to Padre is in place and working. The water comes from small ponds by the incoming water the wave of west side of SPID to the existing energy it produced found its way specify exactly where in the channel which capture ground water. the 300,000 cubic yards of sand Island canal system. Hurricane cont. on A4 should come from. The contractors, absent specific instructions, simply A little Island history dredged from the beach line landward without touching the last 600 feet of the channel. The last dredging was done after Hurricane Ike deposited a The Civil War Comes to the Island large amount of sand in the channel in 2008 and the normal tidal flow was enough to remove it. Boaters Battle at the end of Whitecap this summer have been reporting By Greg Smith old Jack Sands of Indianola, two dangerously shallow water inside the sailors and to be augmented by seven In December of 1862 Corpus jetties near the mouth. men plus Captain Ireland of Hobby’s Christi had been cut off from Texas regiment. Captain Ireland was City staff told ISAC members that shipping by the Union blockade for a resourceful and fearless officer the permit to dredge the channel almost a year. The town’s business who had captured the reviled Yankee expired a year and a half ago without and commerce had ground to a halt commander Lt. Kitterege in Flour anyone noticing, but they believe a and the citizens were running out Bluff three months earlier. new one can be had in short order. The of all the basic necessities of living. challenge for 2017 is that the window The Federal ship Arthur guarded Today’s folks think of Corpus to dredge is between the end of turtle the pass at Port Aransas and the Christi Pass as the ditch that was cut nesting season, around October 1, and Union steam gunboats Sachem and back in 1933, a couple of miles north Spring Break in mid-March so if the Corypheus controlled the bays. The on the way to Port Aransas. In 1862 permit can’t be done in time for this Confederate commanders looking the Corpus Christi Pass’s mouth was October the sand can’t be removed for a way to bring in supplies and where Whitecap Boulevard ends at until October 2018 meaning another ship out cotton decided to investigate the beach, it then went through what summer of boat busting in Packery the possibility of using the unguarded is now lake Padre behind the seawall Channel. Or as one boater put it, Corpus Christi Pass to run the Union condo’s, going along where SH 361 look at it this way, a couple of trips blockade. currently is for a couple of miles and Officers of the 13th Maine Infantry regiment out the Packery will save you the cost then angled to Corpus Christi Bay. of a bottom job. Now friends, that's a The first thing was to chart the current part. The problem with the pass was pass emptied into Corpus Christi boating optimist. But the problem is depths of the pass. The plan was for The pass was about 1,000 feet wide it usually ran only four feet deep at Bay. on the ISAC radar and will get dealt the Confederate schooner Queen of and the depth of the channel ranged the bar in the Gulf and three feet deep the Bay manned by forty seven year from 10 to 15 feet deep for the most Around cont. on A4 seven miles up channel where the History cont.