After years in which boat-dwellers in Marin's Richardson Bay have argued for their right to live on their boats, while city and county officials have faced pressure from residents to address what some see as a "floating homeless encampment," the last of the anchor-outs are being kicked out this week.
The New York Times reports today from Richardson Bay, the shallow bay off Sausalito, that the last of the "illegally anchored vessels" in the Bay will be removed as of Thursday, October 15. The dictate comes from the Richardson Bay Regional Agency (RBRA), following an agreement with the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), which entails the creation of a new mooring field that won't damage the protected eel grass on the bottom of the bay.
The eel grass was just one of several issues that environmentalists have raised in recent years about the so-called anchor-outs, a steadily shrinking community of people living rent-free on boats that are often not seaworthy, and at worst may be leaking oil or other hazardous substances into the Bay.
One such anchor-out exploded in Richardson Bay in February 2021, injuring its lone inhabitant. The likely cause, according to RBRA Harbormaster Curtis Havel at the time, was propane leaking into the of the 35-foot vessel bilge and getting ignited.
The crackdowns on anchor-outs led to a growing homelessness problem in Sausalito itself, and ultimately an encampment in Marinship Park that the city cleared in August 2022 by paying everyone $18,000 apiece to leave.
Now, a counterculture tradition that dates back decades is coming to an end for real this week. Per the Times, one of the last holdouts, 45-year-old Chad Wycliffe, has spent all of his adult life living on a boat, having first arrived in Richardson Bay as a troubled teenager.
The collection of makeshift houseboats and dilapidated anchor-outs dates back to the 1970s, when what was then called Dredgetown had hundreds of residents keeping the bohemian tradition of the Bay Area alive. The population ebbed and grew over the years, and the anchor-out vessels reportedly numbered around 250 in 2016, coinciding with the last spike in rents around the Bay Area before the AI boom.
An effort to clear out abandoned sailboats from the Bay began about a decade ago, per the Times, but efforts to gentrify or otherwise "clean up" the waterfront date back much longer. The Times points to Last Free Ride (A Hip Pirate Movie), which is a 1974 documentary that includes footage of what was called the Houseboat Wars and the Battle of Richardson Bay in 1971, when boat dwellers battled the county over a plan to develop the waterfront.
The Times has this video piece about Wycliffe and the other couple of final holdouts, noting that in wealthy Sausalito, "there's kind of no place for living that [bohemian] life anymore," which has led to this final action. And, the paper notes, the city of Sausalito and the county are proud of a program they created to transition anchor-outs to temporary housing.
The holdouts, though, and perhaps others before them, are likely going to seek out other ways to continue their life on the water. Wycliffe told the Times that he's already moved his boat further offshore so that he'll be out of the reach of the local cleanup effort — but he has to deal with bigger swells and rocking at night until he can find another quiet, protected spot for himself and his two dogs.
Previously: Sausalito Cleared Homeless Out Of Marinship Park — By Paying Them Each $18,000 to Leave
Join the conversation
Comments
Comments load automatically as this section approaches.