Hot Water : Steamed Boat Owners Complain About Marina Shower Fee to Supervisors

Boaters forced to pay a $5-a-day fee to take a shower at Channel Islands Marina say the marina operator has gone overboard.

The shower fee, which was imposed in March, has caused so much turbulence among boat owners at the county-owned harbor that 125 of them have formed the Channel Islands Boat Owners Assn. to protest.

Two representatives of the group told the Ventura County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that the fee is unfair and was imposed without notice. They asked the supervisors to take up their cause.

Supervisor John K. Flynn said county officials would look into the issue.

Representatives of the marina operator say they decided to charge $5 a day for the showers because transients and people who do not own boats were using the showers and swelling the marina’s water bills.

Boat owners previously were given a key that provided entry to the docks, the bathrooms and the showers. In March, bars and new locks were installed on the showers.

So far, the fee has kept non-boaters out of the showers and has reduced the water bills, said Jenny Hunt, a secretary for Channel Islands Marina Inc., which leases the 525-slip marina from the county and rents out dock space to boaters.

To make up for the additional cost to boat owners, the marina operator will forgo a 5% increase in slip fees that was being considered, Hunt said.

But boat owners say that is not good enough. They want the fee abolished.

“He never said ‘Do you have any objections to this?’ He just did it,” one boat owner who requested anonymity said about the marina operator. “Now we have to deal with this, and everybody is frustrated and intimidated.”

Boat owners also complain that most of them were not told about the fee until after the showers were locked.

Jean Holliday, a Los Angeles resident who has docked her boat at the marina for two years, said the bars and additional locks make the bathrooms look like a prison.

“I call it early San Quentin,” she said.

Holliday said she helped form the boaters association because she felt the $5 fee was unfair, and she contends that she has since been evicted from the marina for making too many waves. Representatives for the marina operator could not be reached to comment on her allegations.

Holliday said the fee is frustrating for the nearly 400 boat owners who visit the marina on weekends and have to reserve a key to the showers ahead of time.

However, the nearly 100 people who live on their boats year-round can buy a key for $50 a year.

“We come down here to rest and relax and get away from it all, and this is what we get,” Holliday said, adding that showers are the only amenity the marina provides.

Holliday said she hopes that county officials will force the marina operator to do away with the shower fee.

The cost to rent a 25-foot slip at Channel Islands Marina is $169 a month. The marina charges an additional $100 a month for one person to live on a boat and $160 for two people.

Frank Anderson, the county’s harbor manager, said the county’s lease agreement with Channel Islands Marina Inc. requires the operator to provide bathrooms and showers for the boaters. But he said the agreement does not prohibit the operator from charging fees for the showers.

While Hunt said the operator has had only a few complaints from boaters about the new fee, Anderson said the operator told him that there have been up to 100 complaints.

He said representatives of the marina operator also have admitted that they failed to notify all the boat owners about the new fee. “The leasee acknowledged that it was a mistake,” he said.