Good day,

This past week was filled with meetings:

• At the Board level:
• The Audit Committee will meet and – hopefully – approve the 2025 audited financial statements, which we had to submit to the Port of Los Angeles by our deadline of July 31^st.
• The Advancement Committee and the Investment Committee both met Tuesday morning.
• Ending the week, the Board of Directors had their quarterly meeting on Friday.
• At the Operational level:
• The Leadership team met Tuesday afternoon.
• The Management team met Wednesday morning.

We’re all aware of “Death by Meeting,” but each of these meetings is important, and grouping so many meetings together is not our usual “M.O.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but some people don’t understand why we need a Board of Directors or what they do.  Think of it this way: The Board does “strategy” while Leadership/Management focus on the “tactics” to achieve the strategy laid out by the Board.  Most people don’t cross over into both camps, apart from Jonathan Williams and me, who serve both on the Board and as Corporate Officers, legally authorized to sign contracts and bind the organization (subject to the Board’s approval, depending on the dollar amounts involved).

Getting further “into the weeds”, there are Committees “of” the Board, and Committees “to” the Board.  “Of” means all members of the Committee must be members of the Board.  “To” means a committee can include members who are not members of the Board.  The Audit Committee is a committee “of”; the Investment Committee is a committee “to”.  Make sense?  Further, some committees have the authority to act on behalf of the entire Board.  The Audit Committee is an example of this: it can accept the audited financial statements on behalf of the entire Board.

It may initially seem counterintuitive, but I am not a member of the Audit Committee.  In fact, the CFO is specifically barred from being a member of the Audit Committee.  “Why”, you ask?  Because the auditors need to be able to speak frankly and openly to the Board just in case the CFO isn’t doing his or her job.  It’s what auditors call “checks and balances”.  All this makes us more like a publicly traded corporation than a humble charity, but for good reason.  Donations we receive are also tax-deductible to the donor.  That means every taxpayer indirectly subsidizes us, which means we owe a duty to ensure donations are spent as efficiently as possible, and not misused.

Many Thanks,
Ross

From the desk of the Chief Engineer

Another riveting note from the world of engineering and capital projects.

In Pavilion news, we continue to work on the overpopulated pipeline trench as a priority. As previously mentioned, in addition to finding the 18” Navy “surge” line as it is known, we have discovered a 3”, a 4”, two 10” and two 12” pipelines. The newly discovered pipes have been found in some drawings from the 1960’s where they are marked as “abandoned”, but ownership and abandonment details are not at all clear. We have some work to do.

 We’ve been involved in a flurry of emails and site visits with port authorities and the Navy all week and will continue in that vein in the week following while we try to find out who could/should be responsible for the removal of short sections of each pipeline. This is a speed bump that slows us down and may have an impact on the budget of more than $100,000.00. Such is the nature of construction on a site which has history. In some ways, we’re simply finding the steel bones of an earlier civilization.

 Speaking of budgets, our electrical bill has been a front and center issue these last few weeks, and the Engineering Team has been working on reducing it. In simple terms, our electric bill has gone up 27% since July of 2023, almost entirely due to maintenance cost recovery on the part of the utility and not because of increased usage. To put this in even simpler terms, this is a $10,000.00 increase for one month alone. We can’t change the billing structure, but what we can and must do is to change how we operate the ship. Therein lies the challenge.

Operating an 80-year-old 400,000 sq foot building lying on its side in salt water is not easy. It is phenomenally complex, highly modified, poorly documented, and sometimes simply messed up.  Chief Moser and George are methodically working through areas of the ship, cutting power where possible, always with the intention of leaving much of the normal power distribution alone. Sometimes, they are successful in securing an unused load and nobody is the wiser. And sometimes, they unintentionally fail and the lights go out. 

We need your help, your patience and your understanding while we explore all our options for what is commonly called load shedding. And at the same time, please do not act on your own. Turning off equipment, and even lights will not be helpful unless it is directed by the Engineering Team. We need to shut off entire transformer banks to make a difference, something that only they can do.

So far, we have good news. The team has found roughly 100 amps of 3-phase, 480-volt consumption that can be secured with only a modest impact on our operation, thus meeting our initial goal of cutting consumption by nearly 30%. All our managers are informed of the necessary changes and should be communicating with their respective teams regarding any relevant changes accordingly.

In the normal fare category, Engineering continues to work on barge painting and air conditioning projects which has everyone busy. We’ve also had a shoreside connection water hose break which should be resolved shortly.  

Our Safety information reminder for the week should be a simple one to remember given the earlier message about electrical power. It is always in our best interest to carry our flashlight-equipped phones, or an actual flashlight always while aboard a ship. I’ve used mine often.

I’ll take a break from our Richmond to LA stories this week, focusing instead on one from my maritime career.

My first professional maritime role was aboard the RV Yellowfin, a small, coastal research vessel owned and operated by the California State University system. Moored in Long Beach at the old Sea Scout base, it was an 80-footer, huge by my standards of the time and completely fascinating. We ran around much of the southern California bight, performing actual research, often for the Department of Fish & Game. And sometimes, we took undergrad students out for what we called “kiddy trips,” basically an introduction into simple oceanography or marine biology. It was a blast, and I was learning how to be a mariner.

Fast forward a few months into my tenure, we had motored over to Terminal Island for fuel in preparation for a Fish & Game trip, and upon returning, I noticed that the stern was rather low in the water. I informed the captain, but he wasn’t concerned because we had just finished filling the tanks with thousands of gallons of fuel. Don’t worry, we’re fine, he said.

We arrived at the dock shortly thereafter to bring on groceries and load up the remainder of the crew. I went below to change the oil on the main engines, only to find that the engine room was flooding in a fast and serious manner. I ran from below yelling a few choice words, finally gaining the attention of the more experienced crew. We determined later that the exhaust from a generator had failed, allowing the full ingress of the water-cooling system to flood the boat. We were in fact sinking.  

 Welcome to a maritime career.

 As always, I am grateful to be here,

 Mike

EDITOR'S NOTE: Mike really appreciates feedback on these posts. If you have any questions for him or you'd like to share anything with him, please drop him an email.

Engineering is working to get our rusty barge friend into the water, continuing to resolve the load shed assignment, and keeping up cofferdam operations.

IE&T plans to conduct initial test runs of the Communications tour.

MarComms is focused on getting the word out about the new Life of a Sailor experience and all our events.

Tune in again next month. We'll be back with more good stuff!