Emory Cove Boat Owners Win Eviction Reprieve--Unofficially

The motley cluster of boats anchored in Emory Cove will stay snug in their safe harbor through the holiday season, given an unofficial reprieve from eviction by the San Diego Unified Port District until early next year.

However, the more than 60 craft now calling the San Diego Bay anchorage their home are in for some rough weather in 1988. Port District attorneys and Harbor Police will redouble their efforts to oust the craft, and about two dozen live-aboard families, from their longtime anchorage next to the posh Coronado Cays residential marina on the Silver Strand.

The scuttlebutt about the unadvertised cease-fire has reached the floating community, and Joyce Graf has relaxed her lookout for officials seeking to move the boaters out of the cove and out of South Bay to anchorages elsewhere.

“Wednesday, we are staying aboard and decorating the tree,” she said. “We’re expecting our daughter for Christmas.”

Graf and her husband, Larry, have lived in Emory Cove for years aboard their converted Navy minesweeper. Many of their floating neighbors agree with the Grafs that they would rather fight than move to a Port District-designated free anchorage off National City and the mouth of the Sweetwater River. The site, Graf says, contains no buoys and is far from calm, open to windblown waves and the wakes from passing freighters.

Twice this year, Harbor Police have notified the Emory Cove contingent that they are in violation of a Port District ordinance banning all overnight anchorage in the southern part of the bay.

Once before, the harbor patrolmen motored out and issued tickets to 29 boat owners, ordering them to appear in South Bay Municipal Court to answer the misdemeanor violations. However, the district attorney’s office dismissed the tickets en masse in September, unwilling to deal with the minor charges that attorneys termed “zoning violations,” and not criminal matters, which are the concern of the district attorney’s office.

Then, on Dec. 1, the patrol boats came again and served notice that tickets would again be issued and prosecution would follow. This is because the Port District and the district attorney’s office reached an agreement giving the Port District’s attorney special status as a prosecutor to handle the Emory Cove cases.

“We haven’t heard of anyone in Emory Cove being ticketed since then,” Graf said, “but we’ve heard that they are going to leave us alone until the first of the year. The holiday season is the reason, I suppose.”

Dan Wilkens, Port District spokesman, said that no official order has been given to leave the Emory Cove violators alone, “but the Harbor Patrol has a lot of other things to do at this time of year. At Lindbergh Field, for instance.”

The Port District ordinance that the Emory Cove boats are violating is a three-year effort to regulate usage of the bay, Wilkens said. Because the southern portion of the bay is too shallow for safe navigation and filled with uncharted sunken hulks and other hazards, “we are trying to move

these boats to alternate anchorages in other parts of the bay,” he said.

But the Emory Cove contingent isn’t moving without a fight. They have already challenged the Port District regulations in court, and lost. The boat owners’ former attorney contended that the Port District has no jurisdiction over the navigable waters of the bay and no authority to turn them out of the safe anchorage. Their new attorney, Leo Shaw, is seeking to pursue the appeal of the Superior Court decision in the 4th District Court of Appeal.

Michael Cowett, attorney for the Port District, said he has filed a notice with the appellate court siding with Shaw. “It’s unusual, I know, but we feel the case should be completely litigated and we feel confident about winning.” Cowett explained that, with the precedent of the Emory Cove case, the Port District won’t have to relitigate each misdemeanor citation issued in the future.

The attorney confirmed that the boaters won’t be bothered by Harbor Police until next year, “a nice Christmas present,” but warned that when the patrolmen again hand out tickets to the boaters, the tickets will stick.

The district attorney’s office is swearing in Cowett as a special prosecutor to handle the Emory Cove caseload and other Port District violations--matters that the county staff do not have the time or inclination to pursue.