Sean C. Morgan
It’s a beautiful Friday afternoon with few boats on the lake.
A spot along the shore provides shade and a view of the South Santiam arm of Foster Lake while Linn County Marine Deputy Dan Wittekind munches on a snack.
“It’s not a bad job, but somebody has to do it,” he jokes. Another few minutes and it’s time to make a run around the lake.
Being baseball players in high school, Deputy Wittekind and Marine Deputy Josh Marvin share a bag of David Sunflower Seeds as they watch for safety problems and perform boat inspections.
After informing a group of youths that the dock at Lewis Creek Park is off limits to swimming and loitering, Deputy Wittekind maneuvers the boat around a point toward Sunnyside Campground revealing a boat on full plane inside the no-wake zone, a relatively serious safety violation. Deputy Marvin cites the driver of the boat for violating the no-wake rule.
They stop a boater who is pulling a skier too close to shore. With a warning, they complete a boat inspection and provide a sticker to show it’s been inspected. By the end of the summer, most boats on the lakes will have such a sticker.
A boater approaches looking for a coupon for a snow cone for his son. Last year, deputies apparently provided the coupons to children during inspections.
The deputies inspect his boat for safety requirements then give the man a sticker for his boat. No snow cones this year, but they do have little stickers for the two children in the boat.
The man’s boat won’t start after he turns it off for the inspection, and deputies Marvin and Wittekind happily tow it across the lake to Gedney Creek Boat Ramp.
They are both happy it’s not one of the long tows they sometimes provide on Green Peter with its many long secluded arms.
Dropping the boater off, the deputies are back out on the lake chatting and watching.
Deputy Marvin completed the local Explorer program earlier this year when he turned 21. He applied for a position as a marine deputy, a full-time seasonal position. He hopes to use his time as marine deputy as experience toward a permanent police officer position.
“It definitely has its differences from being in the Explorer Program and being on the road,” Deputy Marvin said. “It’s fun. It’s just given me another tool to use.”
Not only the rules are different but the people on the lakes are different too, still “my goal is to be on the road. I’ve gone in and rode a couple of times, like on my days off, and just hung out.”
Deputies Marvin and Wittekind work four 10-hour shifts over the weekends. Another pair of marine deputies overlap their shifts. When both shifts are on, they typically put one boat in Foster and one in Green Peter.
“As a kid, I never really was on the water,” Deputy Marvin said. “It’s opened me up to a whole different world.”
“It’s made you realize there’s another $30,000 toy you want,” Deputy Wittekind said.
The last two years, Green Peter has been empty with lower lake levels, Deputy Wittekind, in his third year as a marine deputy, said. Although lake levels and boat traffic are up this year, Green Peter still isn’t as busy as it used to be.
Foster also seems a little slower than usual, Deputy Wittekind said. Sunnyside is usually full with no parking and three at a time trying to put into the lake.
Marine deputies take two weeks of training from the state Marine Board followed by training at the Sheriff’s Office. Besides patrolling primarily three waterways, they work with search and rescue and the dive team.
“We try not to make people mad,” Deputy Marvin said. “We just try to keep them posted on the rules.”
When they stop a boater, they will check to make sure there is a life jacket for each passenger; a flotation device, like a cushion; a horn; the blower; and registration information along with a boater’s education card for those under 40 years old. The card will be required of all boaters under the age of 45 next summer. Those passing are given a sticker to place on the back end of the boat.
Among the most common stops the deputies make is violation of the no-wake rule. Usually they simply inform the driver about the rule, which is often misunderstood. Boats, including jet skis, must make no wake on the two arms of Foster Lake. They can travel up to 5 mph if they do not make a wake.
On one stop, the boater told the deputies he was traveling only 2.9. Deputy Marvin explained that he still needed to slow down until there is no wake.
“Most people are pretty happy to see us stopping people driving too fast,” Deputy Wittekind said.
Still others like to flag the deputies down, so they can get their boat inspection out of the way, Deputy Marvin said.
The deputies don’t write many tickets. The busiest day they’ve had this year was 11 citations between the two of them.
“We realize everybody’s up here to have fun,” Deputy Wittekind said. “We just try to keep people having fun but being safe.”
Deputy Wittekind is a graduate of Harrisburg High School. He started out in construction then went on to college where he studied engineering. He decided that wasn’t for him and studied criminal justice, graduating from Western Oregon University with a bachelor’s and a political science minor.
“I love the job,” Deputy Wittekind said. Like Deputy Marvin, his goal is to get out on the road.