CFA Basic Hurricane Plan #2

                         Haul out of water plan

To whom it may concern, 

The vessel  ________________ belonging to  _____________ will be removed from the water during a named storm and placed in position at _________ Marine facility. The vessel's hailing port is ______________ The vessel must be brought to _________ Marine facility by the owner or captain within the pre designated time determined by our facility for it to be hauled out. The vessel _____________ will be hauled out of the water then resting on wooden timbers at the keel and supported by marine jack stands. Additional jack stands will be utilized for wind protection during a tropical storm or hurricane wind event. ______ Marine facility is located ____ miles from Gulf of Mexico access and has rarely been affected by storm surge. Personnel will be monitoring the weather conditions to ensure every precaution is taken in protecting the vessel during the inclement weather.

Manager/representation of ______marine facility

Signed _____________________________

* This is template you can show you marine facility provider as a example of what type of letter you need for your agent/underwriter.

* As much detail that they can provide for them needs to be encouraged and a copy of the contract you sign with the marine facility should also be included to your agent

CFA Basic Hurricane Preparation Plan

                                         In water plan

Hurricane / Tropical Storm Plan for F/V   __________________ 

First response to any government evacuation order or hurricane / tropical storm warning / watch is vessel is moved from marina and relocated in a safe Harbor  either in the intercostal water way or bayou / river inland of the Gulf of Mexico out of harm's way. Vessel is moored with 3 or 4 oversize anchors ____ # anchors with ____ ft of chain and ___ inch nylon rope to insure vessel doesn’t move or drift into another vessel during /Tropical storm / Hurricane event. Captain (will / will not) stay on vessel during tropical storm or hurricane force winds , but all means available will be implemented to make sure moorings will hold. This plan has been in place since ______. 

When using this format, we recommend using anchor size much larger than any anchor you use under normal conditions.

For most boats 30 to 50 ft consider a minimum of 65# anchors, 50 ft up to 80 ft we recommend minimum 95# anchors and deploy them with a minimum of a 3 point anchor system or preferably a 4 point.

Anchor rope dia should be a minimum ¾ in for the 65# anchors and 1 in for the 95# anchors. Also anchor rode lengths need to be 7 to 1 or 10 to 1  length of scope to depth of water.

These are just recommendations and a template for you to use when developing a plan for your insurance carrier and to keep your vessel out of harms way. Please use common sense and caution to any plan. It’s better to be over prepared than under prepared and the additional time and cost to do it right will pale in comparisons to the cost and work to repair or refloat your vessel if you don’t.    

CFA Vessel Insurance Discussions

CFA board of director met today via webinar to discuss issue with marine insurance for our charter fleets gulf wide. As many of you know or have experienced that the availability of insurance companies willing to write marine coverage is getting harder all the time. With that has also come with increased rates each year and seems to be getting worse every time another disaster and storm hits the gulf coast. Insurance is all about risk management and making profit as insurers of personal property and businesses like ours. As claims increase and their balance sheets diminish then they must evaluate who is worth covering and at what expense. Therefore many underwriters have actually quit insuring boats across the board and charter boats in particular. Those that still do must increase their rates or decrease their coverages to make it work. So in our discussions we have come up with a couple of ideas, one is to encourage our charter fleets across the gulf of Mexico to try and take a very proactive approach to keeping their vessels out of harms way. We are going to include on our Face Book page and Our Joincfa.org web site some basic storm preparation protocols and templates for storm management plans to give to your insurance providers. You can go there and copy and paste these for your use and then customize them to suit your individual needs or location. Secondly we are going to reach out to agencies and their underwriters to start a discussion on ways to help us be better prepared , establish minimum standards needed to survive weather events and work to reduce cost as we reduce claims at the same time. Any feed back , recommendations or comments are encouraged please contact:

 Capt Gary Jarvis

 Executive Director CFA

 Cell 850-259-5482

Dr. Roy Crabtree

Regional Administrator

National Marine Fisheries Service

9721 Executive Center Drive North

St. Petersburg, FL 33702

 

Roy,

        Hope all is well and look forward to the days when we can all get together under more normal circumstances. The board of Directors here at the Charter Fisherman’s Association have instructed me to reach out to SERO, the NMFS and Gulf Council Chairman to get some crucial information on the status and implementation of the SEFHIER program. I am also tasked in this letter with letting all those involved in the development and implementation with SEFHIER to share our concerns that we may have once we get a clearer picture of what the final product is going to look like. As I write this letter, I realize the challenges of implementing an Industry led self-reporting data program that had never been done before. Our Board members and I have participated in numerous ELB pilot programs including a rights-based management EFP that had such a system. With that experience we are aware of the challenges the SEFHIER program has and will face as this moves forward. And although as a organization, we have worked tirelessly to get a ELB system on our fleet vessels, we know that the delays have been frustrating for us and those of you in the agency. And now, to exasperate the situation and most likely add to further delays all of us have had to change our daily lives and ability to go to work and preform our duties due to the Covis-19 pandemic. This present shelter at home /work at home and no face to face meetings has put us all at a disadvantage on being able to communicate freely on this program. So, for us at CFA we have taken a position of patient and to do our due diligence by continuing to work with you on the SEFHIER program that will lead to good results once this system is in place.

With this letter I am including a copy of the summary reports that stemmed from the many workshops that were held to get industry input , questions, concerns and solutions offered to create a well-supported, enforceable and successful electronic self-reporting system for the charter for hire industry. Also attached is the 2019 power point presentation we all got that was approved and sanctioned by the agency to share with all the stakeholders at those workshops. The concerns we are having is what has become of the information presented on slides 16 thru 20 of the presentation and will be the basis of my questions.

Based on slide 16 has any of this changed? If yes how? And if yes why?

Slide 16

• •       An account must be set-up with Atlantic States Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program (ACCSP)
• •       Reports can be made using a tablet or mobile phone app
• •       Reports can also be made using VMS

Approved app/VMS vendors will be listed on the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Electronic Technologies website: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/southeast/southeast-electronic-reporting-technologies

Next Question is based on slides 17,18   where in that presentations and the assumptions we had was that our industry would have a choice of two types of vessel monitoring and electronic reporting. Are there two options and cost associated with those options still available? If not, why? And if that is no longer true, how do you plan on addressing the lack of options or capabilities of a single system due to the unique aspects of the CFH industry both in vessel type and geographical challenges when it comes to data transfer? As you can see if you review the workshop summaries there are some who will favor the VMS based technology verse the GPS data logger cell phone reporting application. Either way for industry buy in which is crucial for compliance, accuracy in the self-reported data and for this system to be exceptional these 2 options are an absolute must.

Expected to be approved for Gulf of Mexico permit holders/slide 17

eTRIPS/mobile (ACCSP)

•       a tablet-based program

•       a mobile phone-based program is expected to launch March 2019

•       Hail-out capability will be added in March 2019

•       Requires internet connection

•       24/7 helpdesk

•       VESL (Bluefin Data)

VMS Expected to be approved for Gulf of Mexico permit holders:

Federal Permit Holders Must /slide 18

•       Have NMFS approved hardware/software with GPS capabilities that is permanently affixed to the vessel and that, at a minimum, archives vessel position data and transmits it to NMFS

•       Pings once per hour

•       VMS will meet the requirements (vendors must be approved for for-hire program)

•       Southeast Fisheries Science Center is testing 7 archival GPS units

•       Results will be available in June/July

•       NMFS will begin review and approval process

•       Types of Units       Solar or Powered by the vessel

•       Range of cost Unit: $150-800      Monthly: $10-40

So, in closing I hope that you and your staff can give us the status of these concerns, be able to give us a update on the next expected stage of development.  I think as we get  closer to the implementation of SEFHIER into the CFH sector that we work to improve our level of communication with the SEFHIER program directors and developers to assist us and them in clearing up any confusion among our membership and industry across the board. CFA since we introduced sector separation in Aug of 2008 has been the Bell cow for higher levels of accountability in the CFH sector and one of the key corner stones of that plan was verifiable self-report catch effort and landings recorded before unloading our catch using electronic log books. The technology available now verses then has increased in unmeasurable bounds. Our efforts to continue to support and push for better data collection and the science that it will enhance remains high on our mission statement list. I look forward to your response to our concerns and a better level of communication on our part to be part of a solutions-based team involving the NMFS, SERO, gulf council and Charter fisherman’s Association.

Captain Gary Jarvis

Executive Director

Charter fisherman’s Association

 

 

 

Well the summer grind has come to a end, fishing is still great, but a short reprieve until fall fishing picks up is much needed .So I am sending this out to remind every federal permit holder in the Gulf that we need your support as we go into the fall management cycle with a big list of things CFA is going to do to improve your profits, access to our important fisheries and value to your business. A annual professional CFA membership is $100 for the next 12 month. The actions of our organization in the PAST AND IN THE FUTURE WILL BRING YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS each year as we forge on to improve our industry. To be effective and provide needed expenditures to manage our organization we need your membership , voice and financial support. Please click on Join CFA and sign up today

ALL FLORIDA COMMERCIAL AND CHARTER FOR HIRE BUSINESS OWNERS INCLUDING STATE LLICENSED GUIDES 

I have had clarification that your crew count as employees even if they are 1099 sub contractors just send the 10-99's in with you application

Last week, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the activation of the Business Damage Assessment survey to assess the impact of COVID-19 on Florida’s local business operations. The survey, managed by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), will evaluate businesses affected by COVID-19 and the impacts the virus has had on the local economy so actions to implement appropriate relief programs can begin.

 

I encourage you to register and take the Business Damage Assessment Survey online here. www.floridadisaster.biz  Results from this survey will be shared with state agencies and local partners. Surveys submitted by small businesses can be used to access the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan, made available for COVID-19 through the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act. For inquiries or assistance with the survey, businesses can contact Emergency Support Function 18 at ESF18@em.myflorida.com.

The communities along the gulf coast. Part of that work is to try and get some antidotal information from all of you to share with congressional leaders and help formulate our plea for assistance. I know you have seen a same request from NACO and perhaps from your own local fleet organization. I encourage you to respond to all of those requests. All of us are working towards the same goal and CFA plans to work side by side with other local and national organizations so to strengthen our voice. So please to the best of your ability fill out these 9 questions and email us back at huntingmayor@gmail.com. All propriety information will be held in confidence and only the compilations of total responses will be made public.

Capt. Gary Jarvis

Executive Director CFA

 

Name,

Vessel,

Home Port

 

1) Year to date are you up or down in gross income over 2019? 

2) What percentage are you up or down?

 

3 How are your advance booking compared to this time 2019 and what would say that percentage change is up or down?

 

4) Have your local municipality made decisions to close tourism off? 

 

5) How long can you reasonably stay in business due to no travel or local or state stay at home orders? Estimate how many Weeks or Months?

 

6) What will be your first financial crisis and when will that most likely take place?

 

7) What would it take for you to remain viable to be in business in 2021 in case this situation lasts for 2 months or more. 

 

8) If you are Captain but not the owner what are your losses year to date, and do you think your owner will be able to maintain your employment? Hoe long before you need to find another line of work?

 

9) If you’re a mate or deckhand what is your personal financial outlook in 2020 and how long will you be able to remain in the industry before you have to find another line of work?

 

2020 CFA board of directors will hold officers elections today with announcements of the new officers being released Feb 22 

CFA is proud to announce the 2020 board of directors 

Greg Ball Tx

Scott Hickman Tx

Mike Jennings Tx

Steve Tomeny La

Clarence Seymore Ms

Gary Bryant Al 

Bobby Kelly Al

Jim Green Fl

Billy Archer Fl

Dylan Hubbard Fl

Due to CFA by-laws nominations for Board of Directors and Officers require a 14 day notice period. The notice sent out last week before our annual meeting didn't have a long enough notice period. So nominations are back open to members in good standing.To be in good standing you must be a CFA member so memberships fees of $100 must be paid ( all DCBA members are paid up thru Oct 2020 and are in good standing). To join CFA go to joincfa.org  Nominations for board or committee members are open Feb 1st thru Feb 14th. Voting will take place Feb 15th and results will be posted here soon thereafter. They can be sent to Capt Gary Jarvis Ex Director CFA at huntingmayor@gmail.com