Rogue Aquatic Park yachtsman convicted
Federal judge postpones sentencing for Pennington
Rogue yachtsman Bryan Pennington was convicted in federal court Thursday of illegally anchoring his boat in Aquatic Park Cove, putting at least a temporary end to a six-month standoff with park police and swimmers who say Pennington was polluting the bay with sewage.
In a courtroom crowded with bay swimmers and park rangers in uniform, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler told Pennington, “You are not entitled to keep your boat moored at Aquatic Park without a permit.”
The verdict from Beeler came after a three-hour bench trial during which Pennington, who represented himself, tried to destroy the credibility of a supervising park ranger. During an hour of cross-examination, Pennington challenged the legality of the federal laws that govern the cove, challenged the way Beeler ran her courtroom, demanded a jury trial, and ultimately refused to cooperate any further, citing an unspecified disability.
“Right now I am beside myself. I’m not even hearing what you are saying,” Penning-
ton said as the judge announced her verdict. “I’ve been through trials before and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Beeler convicted Pennington of three counts of anchoring his yacht, a Searunner 34 trimaran, without a permit in federal waters on three occasions this year and last: Sept. 26-Oct. 9, Nov. 11-20 and Dec. 4-Feb. 9.
Aquatic Park is part of San Francisco Maritime National Park, and regulations prohibit anchoring for more than five consecutive nights or 130 nights in a calendar year. A permit is also required, which Pennington neither sought nor obtained.
Beeler postponed sentencing to May 10 while suggesting she would stop short of a “stayaway order” that the National Park Service had been seeking. The infractions are misdemeanors and he will not be fined. Swimmers fear that there will be nothing in Beeler’s court order to prevent Pennington, who has a reputation for squatting illegally in his trimaran, from doing it again.
“He’ll come right back in,” said David Offen, a member of the Dolphin Club. “He’s done it at every opportunity.”
In court Thursday, Pennington, wearing a black beret and repeatedly flipping a quarter, paced the courtroom as he grilled a park supervisor over aspects of federal and maritime law.
In an hour-long crossexamination of David Pelfrey, supervisory ranger with the National Park Service, Pennington suggested that he, Pennington, is disabled and that he was being hounded for simply seeking safe harbor.
“Are you aware of me having medical problems?” he asked Pelfrey.
Pennington’s boat, which is without an anchor currently and has no motor, has been tied up at the Hyde Street Harbor commercial pier since mid-April, when it was towed there after breaking loose from its mooring in Aquatic Park.
The boat sits behind a locked gate. For Pennington to retrieve it, he would have to pay $3,400 in towing and dock charges to the Port of San Francisco, said Dominic Moreno, who runs the harbor.
Aside from his legal issues involving a lack of permit, Pennington, who typically lives on his boat, has created a health hazard, say swimmers with the South End Rowing Club and the Dolphin Club. Before it broke loose and was towed out of the harbor, his trimaran was anchored in the swimming lanes.
Aquatic Park is not a marina and has no pumping facilities, and swimmers have complained that Pennington has been dumping his waste overboard, an allegation that has been apparently backed by police who have found buckets of human waste on board the craft.
The case is being closely watched because Pennington has a history of anchoring without permits in waters off the coast of Florida, Santa Barbara and Sausalito.
Swimmers and rowers maintain that if Pennington is allowed to stay in the cove without a permit, it will create a precedent for people who live on boats to drop anchor and live in sheltered waters.
Anchoring boats illegally is nothing new. There are 50 to 100 other mariners anchored off the shoreline of Sausalito, Belvedere and Tiburon. Bill Price, harbor administrator for the Richardson’s Bay Regional Authority, said that Pennington has anchored there illegally in the past.
Such squatters are called “anchor-outs” and there is no enforcement. It has been going on “since Sir Francis Drake,” Price said. “He was our first anchorout.”
As many as 10 anchorouts are in the cove where Lake Merritt meets the Oakland Estuary, said attorney Ann Strayer, who coaches the rowing team at Oakland Tech. Many of the boats are tied up at the dock, making it difficult to safely launch shells, Strayer said.
“If Pennington is allowed to stay, that means more boats, which will compromise the ability to access the water,” she said.
But in court Thursday, Pennington wasn’t conceding his ground. He questioned whether Aquatic Park is a cove or a lagoon, and whether signage adequately states that it is federal water.
“How would a mariner know whether he is in federal water or state water?” he asked. He chose not to testify and claimed he had spent three years studying due process. He suggested that he would be appealing the ruling before gathering up his papers and hustling out of court.