Volunteers keep Longboat Key boating channel open

It’s not hard to find someone willing to pitch in on Longboat Key.

Read to schoolchildren? Check.

Tend to wild swans? Got it covered.

Keep track of sea turtles and their nests? Where do we sign up?

But there’s a group of residents who’ve taken on a project – since the 1960s – that most people would probably associate with a more formal organization.

Oh, like the federal government, maybe.

Members of the Buttonwood Harbor Channel System wouldn't have the responsibility any other way. 

The volunteers who created and now maintain the navigational system have been so successful in their work that the U.S. Coast Guard has for years included their green and orange markers on official charts, both electronic and paper. They charge neighboring communities $100 a year to help fund upgrades, repairs to markers and the occasional need to dredge -- though the channel itself is fairly stable and protected.

Richard Olin, the organization’s leader for about 17 years after retiring in 1980 to Longboat Key from his career in the U.S. Coast Guard in Chicago, said he was struck to help out not long after he moved here.

“I hate meetings, but I wanted to do something to be of service,’’ Olin said, adding he heard of the group and paid them a visit about the time Col. Harry Hall, who founded the organization and installed the first markers, was looking to step away from the job. “They needed someone to run it, so I raised my hand. What a perfect fit.’’

Greg Hoffmann, Olin’s next door neighbor, came into the leadership role the same way following Olin and kept the channel open and up to date until this winter, when he turned the wheel over to David McNichol.

Olin said during Hoffmann’s leadership, the channel system became a first-class operation. The channel, which connects the homes of Buttonwood Harbor to Sarasota Bay, along with communities as far north as Longboat Cove, also allows access to Buttonwood Harbor itself, a premier natural anchorage.

“I was a patch, patch, patch guy,’’ Olin said. “Greg did a lot to make the channel pristine.’’

Among those efforts, Hoffmann painstakingly plotted the GPS coordinates of each marker, essentially the size of a utility pole driven into the seabed, and reported them to the Coast Guard. He also orchestrated the installation of a navigational light on Marker 1, the entrance to the channel in Sarasota Bay. From there, 6-8 feet of water can be followed into Buttonwood Harbor and other neighborhoods, marinas and docks.

But, there was a problem.

Olin, who with the Coast Guard was familiar with full-scale aids to navigation, was happy with finding a small, self-contained light than ran off power from a solar cell. But bird poop kept covering up the red light.

Hoffmann took a VHF antenna, split it into three pieces and made an obstacle to keep the birds from landing and, well, you know. 

"At night, on the water, it's very, very hard to find your way home without that marker,'' Hoffmann said. "It provides a road home.''

That little light is part of the Coast Guard's official listing of navigation markers, which helps boaters from all over understand what it is and where it leads.  

Olin said even though he spent his career working with aids to navigation and helping mariners find their way, there wasn’t any way he was going to pass on the opportunity to help out once he became a member of the community.

When you think about it, I read and read about the Longboat Key experience before we moved,’’ Olin said. “You can only play so much golf and tennis. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that it’s a lot of people who have made a difference their whole lives and have prided themselves on making a difference.’’