People /Herbert J. Vida : Barnacle Bill’s the Name, and the Business of Marine Repairs and Salvage Is His Game

“Barnacle” Bill Finch of Huntington Beach is about as close as you’re going to get to a waterfront character in the county.

He’s tough stuff and can spin tales about the snappy life he has experienced around the world, including the five years he spent in Vietnam repairing bridges, building docks, and salvaging and repairing boats, the work that now keeps him in groceries.

“I’ve been working in marine construction around the world all my life,” Finch said, “and about 15 years ago I decided it was time to settle down and open a fun little business. I retired from marine construction.”

Besides, he noted, he has a wife and four children.

Ever wearing dark sunglasses and T-shirt, the husky export from a small fishing village in Connecticut spends his time towing and cleaning the bottoms of the 3,000 boats in Huntington Harbor as well as salvaging boats and cars that weekend sailors carelessly sink while trying to set the boat afloat from launch ramps in Huntington Beach.

“Let me tell you the story about this grandmother who didn’t want to go boating,” Finch said, smiling and puffing on a cigarette. “She wanted to stay home and take care of the kids. Well, she went along and her son backed the boat into the water, but forgot to put the water plug in and the boat starts to sink.

“Now get this,” he continued. “The son runs the boat at high speed to beach it, and all the time the grandmother is screaming, ‘I told you I wanted to stay home with the children.’ ”

Besides that, Finch said, still laughing about the grandmother, “I’ve got about the only equipment available to pick up boats that fall off trailers. You wouldn’t believe how many people forget to hitch the trailer up right and end up with the boat on a highway or the freeway.”

He charges upward of $400 to pick the boat up, he said.

Finch, 51, stays active, doing much of the boat salvage and repair work with just one employee. “I’m in as good shape as a 25-year-old,” he boasted, “but my worker likes to say I’m the only guy he knows who uses his senior citizen card to buy oxygen for his diving suit.”

And the name Barnacle Bill?

“Grandpa, my dad and myself are all named William J. Finch, so we had to find a way to distinguish us from one another. Grandpa is called Cap and my dad is called Bill,” mused Finch, “so my dad said one day, ‘Hell, that’s Barnacle Bill,’ and the name stuck.”

Ever wonder how much money it would cost to pay for the work volunteers do for free?

For instance, at the $3.35 hourly minimum wage, it would have cost St. Joseph Hospital in Orange $115,240 just to pay Lucille Friesley of Anaheim, with 11,800 lifetime volunteer hours, Polly Holmberg of Laguna Hills with 11,400 hours and Nellie Rumph of Santa Ana with 11,200 hours. But hospital spokesperson Valerie Orleans said that’s not close to the amount saved by the 67,139 hours donated last year by all hospital volunteers who were recently honored at an awards luncheon.

At minimum wage, that totals $224,915.65.

“Actually,” Orleans said, “a recent study showed it would cost $6.50 an hour to hire someone for the work volunteers do.”

Hypnotists are not only getting more respect these days, said hypnotist Pamela J. Schmidt, 41, of Anaheim, but some are making pretty good money helping people to stop smoking and to control their weight.

“We’re not saying hypnotism can help everyone,” said Schmidt, who was recently elected to a two-year term as president of the 40-member Orange County chapter of the California Professional Hypnotist Assn., “but we’re certainly helping a lot of our clients.”

What Schmidt hopes to accomplish in her term is to “enhance the credibility of hypnotists” through a state certification program and set a strict criteria that people will have to meet before they can call themselves hypnotists or hypnotherapists.