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Talk of the bay

By Times staff writers
Published February 20, 2006

New Yucatan ferry may raise anchor

For a few short months three years ago, travelers enjoyed a truly unique cruise experience: a ferry that ran from Tampa's port to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

The Yucatan Express offered fares as cheap as $75 roundtrip, not including food, port taxes or a private bathroom, for the voyage that lasted 35 hours each way. You also could take your car for an additional charge.

Now, a new group of local maritime and travel veterans is quietly trying to resurrect the service. Their company, The Shuttle LLC, is shopping for a ferry and trying to round up financing for the project, says Erik Hultkrantz, one of the principals.

The biggest pool of passengers, he says, would be local retirees looking for a more adventurous experience than those mass-market cruises to places like Cozumel and the Bahamas.

The ferry would run from Tampa to the port of Progreso, whose mayor recently said the service would start in April. Hultkrantz insists it's way too early to guess when, or if, they'll be able to launch the ferry. But they do have a Web site, www.TheShuttle.com where you can register for updates on the project.

- STEVE HUETTEL, Times staff writer

Institutional Investor magazine says St. Petersburg's Jabil Circuit and dozens of other companies deserve kudos for showing the love to their shareholders. Money managers and analysts surveyed by the magazine ranked Jabil the most shareholder-friendly company in the electronics manufacturing services sector.

Prize-winning attributes from the magazine's point of view include strong financial performance, director independence, sensible executive compensation, stock price performance, and honest and accessible top executives.

Other companies with bay area ties named as tops in their industry sectors included Southwest Airlines, CVS Corp., Verizon Communications, HCA, Allstate, Nordstrom and Clear Channel Communications.

- HELEN HUNTLEY, Times staff writer

If you thought those highly hyped Super Bowl commercials lost some of their pizzazz this year, you have company.

Big advertisers are getting leery about forking out huge bucks for the so-called Academy Awards of TV Commercials ever since the dot.com hubris of 2000. Since then, Super Bowl ad revenues have been down to flat. This time ABC had to deeply discount prices up to $1-million to sell them all, according to industry bible Advertising Age.

Five advertisers redid aired spots rather than come up with new ones, up from one advertiser in 2005. Pepsi bought one fewer ad and Visa International bowed out to preserve its dollars for the Olympics. Even Anheuser-Busch, the game's biggest advertiser, is re-evaluating the strategy for 2007.

Ratings were up and the game was undecided well into the second half, but Walt Disney Co.'s ABC couldn't sell all the spots until the day before the game. Emerald Nuts, which bought one ad, took another for $2-million as did American HomeHealth, a St. Petersburg startup that used the game to introduce its household cleaner line. Touted at $2.6-million, the cost of a 30-second spot settled in below that, although Disney said it made its sales goal.

Disney, however, was the second biggest advertiser with 3.5 minutes of time, something that didn't happen when Fox and Viacom's CBS aired the game and didn't sell themselves ads for their parent company's films. Disney theme parks, ESPN Mobile and films bought the spots, but Disney's bottom line would have been fatter if someone else had paid.

- MARK ALBRIGHT, Times staff writer

Contrary to what some people think, FEMA does not stand for the Frequent Error and Mismanagement Agency.

But sometimes, you have to wonder.

To promote Florida Hazardous Weather Awareness Week (Feb. 12-18), the Federal Emergency Management Agency offered tips to reduce the risk of flooding. It was much-needed information, considering that in the past 10 years, flood losses in Florida totaled more than $2-billion.

Most of it we should already know: Plan an evacuation route, store important documents where they won't be damaged, and take photos or videos of your important possessions.

Then there was this statement: "Consider improvements to your home to reduce the chances of a financial loss due to flooding."

Good advice. Any suggestions?

"These activities range from raising the washer and dryer on a platform in a basement, to moving the fuse box from the basement to an upper floor, to more rigorous methods such as elevating the entire house."

Let's take these one at a time.

Raise the house? Better raise a lot of cash first. At last check, there were no more than a handful of companies in the Tampa Bay area that do that, most of them are booked into next year, and the cost is usually about $100,000.

As for the basements, no statistics are available on the number of homes in Florida that have cellars. But at least on the peninsula, it's safe to say the same number of homes have ice skating rinks. Or live tigers guarding the entrance.

We don't have basements. We have Florida rooms.

Still, the basic premise is a good one: If you live in a flood-prone area, or if your home was built before the new building codes, raising your appliances a few feet off the ground is an excellent idea.

- TOM ZUCCO, Times staff writer

Minority Report, the futuristic film that starred Tom Cruise as a detective who arrested people before they actually killed someone, may not have been so far-fetched.

Some safety experts gathered at the University of South Florida in Tampa last week to suggest research ideas for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health nominated work place violence prevention in retail settings.

AON Management, an Orlando consulting arm of the insurance giant, suggested "work place predators" go unnoticed until someone "goes postal."

That's because few experts separate primal aggression from purposeful aggression.

AON "anecdotally" developed telltale signs of cognitive aggression that is fueled by malicious or hostile intent, said Dr. John Byrnes, who is searching for partners to test AON's work.

He recently delivered a presentation to the FBI and Transportation Security Agency, whose behavior scientists use signs of primal aggression - stress, anxiety and emotion - as terrorist tip-offs.

That misses cognitive signs.

"These aggressors not only disconnect with their victim, they disconnect with their own well-being. They find a profound calm. They become steely. They have no emotion," he said. "A terrorist also can be described as the individual who intends to shoot co-workers, whether due to a robbery or a dispute, and they care little whether they lose their lives in the process."

- MARK ALBRIGHT, Times staff writer

When Space Adventures Ltd. of Arlington, Va., starts blasting space tourists on suborbital flights a couple years from now at $100,000 a ride, one of the commercial spaceports will be in the United Arab Emirates, the company said Friday.

But Space Adventures, which has an office in Cape Canaveral, is actively scouting for sites in Asia and North America. President Eric Anderson has made no secret that Florida is near the top of his list. All he's looking for is a little help.

During a presentation in August to Gov. Jeb Bush's Commission on the Future of Space & Aeronautics in Florida, Anderson urged the group, led by Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings, to take "proactive steps" to make the deal happen. Ticking off a laundry list of requests, from funding for equipment and facilities to tax incentives to help with federal licenses, Anderson said, "A few cleverly placed steps at the beginning will make the difference."

The Sheikh of Ras Al-Khaimah, the most northern of the seven emirates that form the UAE, got the message. Not only did he have the authority and willingness to grant clearance for Space Adventures to operate suborbital flights in the country's air space (a process that would involve several federal and military agencies in Florida), the sheikh also agreed to commit $30-million for the company's global spaceport development.

Space Adventures, which was considering launch sites in Texas, Oklahoma, California and Nevada as well as Florida, is apparently looking for a similar response stateside. A competitor, Virgin Galactic, is faring a bit better: It plans to base operations at a spaceport to be built south of Truth or Consequences, N.M, a $225-million project that just received legislative approval for millions of dollars in public incentives.

- KRIS HUNDLEY, Times staff writer

Don't stick a banana republic label on St. Lucia and the Turks and Caicos.

Leaders of the two island nations came to Tampa last week to push for more trade with the United States. And no one was talking about the yellow fruit with a waxy peel.

"There's a myth we're very bureaucratic and laid back. That's not so," St. Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony said in a plea for American investment.

Anthony rules an island nation whose 162,000 population is dwarfed by that of Mayor Pam Iorio's Tampa. Even smaller is the Turks and Caicos: 35,000 people sharing an archipelago known as a tax haven.

Turks and Caicos is a territory of Her Britannic Majesty's government. Its leader, Michael Musick, bears the title "chief minister."

The Turks uses the U.S. dollar, boasts billions in foreign investment and, unusual for much of the developing world, has a labor shortage. Workers come from as far as China and the Philippines.

Musick pressed for development of a "Caribbean brand" to market their saltwater societies to American businesses and consumers.

St. Lucia's leader argued the English-speaking islands share with the United States similar democratic institutions and histories of British colonialism.

With the recent destruction of St. Lucia's banana industry - cheaper Central American growers did it in - the country is courting Uncle Sam.

"The Caribbean has changed a hell of a lot," Anthony told a group of about 100 business types. "This is not the Caribbean of the 1950s and 1960s."

- JAMES THORNER, Times staff writer

[Last modified February 20, 2006, 10:45:36]