Houseboaters on Richardson Bay Heading Into More Legal Storms

The water at Richardson Bay was as still and smooth as a sheet of green glass one recent morning, but Larry Moyer, who has lived on houseboats here for nearly 20 years, says that when storms pass through, the bay can become a pretty rough place to live.

During those years, frequent political storms also have buffeted this small bay a few miles north of San Francisco. Sausalito has grown from a rustic waterfront town dominated by maritime workers and artists to an expensive tourist Mecca with million-dollar homes dotting its hills.

As Moyer, a 64-year-old photographer with the face of a cigar-store sea captain, explained on a rowboat tour around the bay, the changes have brought increasing pressure on him and other longtime houseboat dwellers.

Forced to Pay Rent

In the 1970s, as new marinas were built, houseboaters who had been living rent-free, many in homemade boats, were ordered by authorities to begin paying monthly berth fees and to make improvements in their vessels.

Many feared that the changes were only the beginning of a drive to rid the waterfront of its more colorful inhabitants. A few violent confrontations occurred in the late 1970s between sheriff’s deputies and houseboaters angry at the construction of new marinas.

In the end, most of the houseboaters tied up on shore and agreed to live according to the rules laid out by the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, an umbrella group of representatives from Marin County and the cities of Sausalito, Tiburon, Belvedere and Mill Valley.

But others, like Moyer, simply moved their boats to the middle of the bay--out of the reach of any one individual marina operator. These 50 to 100 “anchor-outs,” as they call themselves, are the last holdouts of the “houseboat wars.” It appears that they are waging a losing battle.

“This feels like the last stand,” said Don Bradley, 52, pausing as he rowed to shore with his dog, Lucky. “There’s nowhere to go from here,” he said.

Bradley, who makes a living as a welder, woodworker and mechanic, has lived anchored out in the bay since 1960, in boats he built himself.

Last July, the bay agency passed an ordinance effectively banning the anchor-outs from their offshore moorings, although the ordinance has not yet been enforced.

The anchor-outs and their supporters filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to have the ban invalidated, but a federal judge last month dismissed it.

Martin Jarvis, the anchor-outs’ attorney, has appealed the ruling and plans to file another suit in state court this week.

Marin County Supervisor Albert Aramburu, vice chairman of the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, said the agency would continue to set up the administrative mechanisms for enforcing the ordinance without waiting for the outcome of the appeal. As part of that process, the city of Sausalito recently agreed to act as the harbor master who, under the terms of the ordinance, must enforce it.

There are as many ideas about the real issues at stake as there are parties to the conflict. Aramburu and other officials say the key issue is that the anchor-outs are illegally making private use of the public-trust land under the water where they are moored.

“Nobody’s guaranteed a free home,” said Jeff Blanchfield, chief planner for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a regional body charged by the Legislature with regulating development on the bay. “It’s like someone saying, ‘I like Golden Gate Park and I’m going to build my house there.’ ”

To the anchor-outs, it appears that the forces of growth, money, bureaucracy and conservatism have finally combined to drive them out of one of the last unfettered places to live in the Bay Area.

Suzanne Cooke and her husband, Nick, a computer programmer, have lived anchored-out for four years. Their boat is snug and self-sufficient, their computer and other appliances powered by the sun and wind. A row of daffodils bobs in the floating front yard. From their deck, they enjoy striking views of Mt. Tamalpais and San Francisco.

“The thing I like most is the light on the water,” Suzanne Cooke said. “And I feel good that the way I’m living on my boat taxes the Earth less than if I were living on land in a house.”

Other anchor-out vessels look a bit less like suburbia on the water. One boat, shaped like an elongated helmet, is half submerged. Another is tethered to a floating chicken coop inhabited by chickens, rabbits and peacocks. Still another looks like a floating blue-and-white tepee. A few boats appear impossibly tiny, the waterfront equivalents of transient hotel rooms. Several appear to have been abandoned.

Opponents of the anchor-outs say they have turned the bay into a floating junkyard. “No one tolerates these abysmal conditions and lack of control any more,” Aramburu said.

The anchor-outs themselves are as mixed as their homes. One, Forbes Kiddoo, is a millionaire, but most are of more modest means. The thread that connects them is a strong desire to live independently. “It’s a place where I belong, where you’re not cramped up against your neighbor,” Don Bradley said. “I can play my drums out here at night and nobody bugs me.”

Under the terms of the ordinance, anchor-outs who can convince the state Lands Commission that their boats are navigable may be able to stay on in a legal anchorage in a still undesignated area of the bay that covers private land. But officials admit that most of the anchor-outs would flunk a navigability test. Aramburu said officials hope to provide funding to help anchor-outs relocate, but no specific plans have been made.

The Cookes say that if they are forced off the bay, they will set sail for “other beautiful places.” Others like Bradley, who make their living as marine salvagers or by doing odd jobs, say they cannot afford to make their boats seaworthy or to relocate to land. To tie up at nearby Waldo Point Harbor, which is full anyway, anchor-outs would have to pay berth fees of $300 to $600 per month, plus a one-time “security deposit” of several thousand dollars. Consequently, said attorney Jarvis, “These people are under direct threat of becoming homeless.”

Moyer, who shares his houseboat with an artist wife and 10 cats, views the possible demise of the anchor-out way of life with a good-humored fatalism. He moved to California in 1967, after his Greenwich Village apartment was demolished. “Fighting developers is an old story to me,” he said. “But I never figured anybody owned the water. Never made sense to me.”