I’m not a bona fide Boat Bum. Much as I like to think I am, I don’t quite make the grade. I live in a quality marina. I pay a monthly fee to occupy my slip and I’ve never missed a day of rent. My boat (Scruffy) is navigable and currently registered.

A true Boat Bum lives out here on Richardson’s Bay.

A true dyed in the wool Boat Bum lives off the water. He or She drops a anchor out here on Richardson’s Bay and rows or motors to shore in a dingy. A true Boat Bum pays nothing for rent. Not too long ago you had a couple hundred Boat Bums living on their boats out on the bay. Their numbers have dwindled dramatically.

You want to know more about them, watch this video.

Okay, so watch five minutes, you’ll get the drift. Go back later and watch the whole thing. It’s a quality piece from The New Yorker. Those snobs know how to write.

A lifestyle

A TRUE Boat Bum does not live on the water because it’s groovy to commune with Cormorants and Pelicans. He (She) is out there because it’s a CHEAP WAY TO LIVE! It’s like Hobos riding the rails back in the Depression Days: you get to where you want to go FREE, plus, as you travel aimlessly, you got a crash pad with a pile of straw for a mattress. It’s…a lifestyle.

Maybe you begin your anchor out adventure when you’re young. Like Einstein in the New Yorker video. You’re young and beautiful. You’re grooving on the flight of the cormorants. But as the years go by and you’re still out there, you begin to change. Slowly at first. Then, near the end, rapidly. You get scruffier and scruffier until one day you appear as a pathetic aged gap-toothed tramp. You’re sixty two but you look twenty years older. You’re in and out of the emergency ward. You’re laughing because you still love the life of a Boat Bum. Everything is still groovy.

Others are not so “buoyant”. It could be you stopped loving the life long ago. But what to do? You’re stuck. You got nothing but this old boat out here on the bay. It’s way tougher now rowing to shore and back and lugging water bottles and bags of food and propane. And the weather seems so much harder now. Or maybe you’re just too beat up to handle it anymore. (I will say the weather has been much harder this year.) The last two or three blows you couldn’t take it out there on the rolling surge. You slept in your car. Or you found a spot at the laundromat and crawled into your sleeping bag. Man, you are depressed. The cormorants are no longer groovy. Their cries only aggravate your depression. One night you hang yourself with the mainsheet halyard, like Lukas did. I’m not saying Lukas was normal before he became an anchor-out. They used to call them rugged individuals. The first ones where the real deal. That was when Bison where hunted by the Braves and the Frontier was wide open, flush with game. People had thick skins in the Old West. It’s a whole different world now. Nobody loves you if you’re living off the land.

Unless you’re young and beautiful. Even then you’re viewed as a little odd.

A fierce blow

Last night the winds blew like hell. Near thirty all night long. With gust of forty or more. I’m aboard Scruffy in a slip so I’m good. I don’t feel it much. It’s pleasant to kick back in bed and hear the wind howl and the tarps flap and the squeaky fenders–the racket muted by my electric heater. Old Scruffy is heavier than a small house, so he don’t bounce around too much. He’s in a slip and tied-off with spring lines cinched properly. I’ve been doing this long enough. So I’m good. But out there on the bay. It’s real tough out there if you’re on a sailboat. Or any small craft. The wind dragged several anchored boats. And did some damage ashore.

A chance encounter

By seven this morning the wind dies down. Now I’m up and dressed and out of here. I parked up the street out of an abundance of caution. Best not to give my harbormaster the slightest impression I’m living on my boat. I’m sure He knows already and does not give a shit. I find it tough to break good sneak aboard habits.

It’s cold as hell out. But dry. Nice and dry thanks to the wind. The rain is coming, I know. That’s what the wind was all about. I’m marching down the dirt road past the boat yard eager to make it to my car when I notice this dude approaching from the opposite direction. He’s got on a rumpled foul weather jacket. He’s dragging a square suitcase, the tiny black wheels scraping through the gravel like a toy sled and he’s got a hobo sack over his shoulder. He’s a tough one. Maybe fifty. If that. I’m thinking I’ll just keep my head down. But he gets up beside me and says, “How you doing?”

“I’m good,” I say. I keep walking. He gets just past me and says:

“I lost my boat.”

Now I’m thinking, okay, I got half a minute.

“Where’d you loose it?”

“Wind dragged it somewhere. I don’t know where it is.”

I say something stupid: “You weren’t on it?”

“Oh, hell, no. Not in that wind. I slept in Mill Valley last night. Now I can’t find my boat.”

“Well, the wind was Northwesterly. It’s probably off the Belvedere shore. That’s where they often end up in this wind.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m on a boat, too.”

“What kind?”

“A trawler.”

“You loose your boat, too?”

“No, I’m in the Marina here.”

“Here in Sausalito?”

“Yeah.”

“I hate Sausalito.”

“Me, too.”

He sighs. “Well,” He says, “Maybe the wind blew my boat over to the City. I wouldn’t mind at all being over there.”

Maybe he just wasn’t listening.

He should know better. But he’s an anchor out. Many of them do not know better. I can see that explaining to him the impossibility of his boat dragging an anchor across the bay to The City from a Northwesterly wind is not worth the effort.

“Try Belvedere,” I tell him. “It’s likely been dragged over that way. Especially in this wind.”

“Well,” he says. “Let me know if you find a Hunter 25. That’s my boat.”

“I will.”

I’m moving off when he calls to me: “What’s you’re name?”

“Don.”

“I’m Dan.”

“Nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

“I’ll keep a look out for your boat,” I tell him, though I know I’ll never see him again.

“It’s a hunter 25. If I lose it, no big deal. I’ll just get another boat.”

“That’s the spirit.”

I don’t look back to see him trudge through the gate onto the bay trail. I don’t even feel sad for him. Though, strangely, now I do.

It’s a tough thing, losing one’s home.

Watch the video. The same thing happens to Einstein. He looses one decrepit tub. No big deal. He simply finds another one.

But I’ll tell you something. These anchor-outs. They are a dying breed. Soon Richardson Bay will be a parking lot for Playboy Yachtsmen.

If the city gets its way.

Guys like Dan will need to find yet another alternative lifestyle…