THE HIDDEN LIVES A
t first glance, the life of a harbormaster might not seem that exciting. After all, aren't they basically pseudo landlords — like the people who run those dry storage places, except it's wet storage? Sure, they'll occasionally retie a frayed dockline for you, or tell those noisy neighbors to quiet down. But mostly, when they're not busy collecting r ent, they're just sitting in their offices pushing paper around. Right? Wrong. We've met and known lots of harbormasters over the years, and a few have become good friends. The majority of them are smart, energetic, glass-is-halffull kind of folks. Most love what they do, and many have been doing it for 20 or 30 years. And their stories! You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. Here are a few glimpses into the 'hidden life' of harbormasters — all real incidents, all happened right here in the Bay Area.
master who discovered it was a bunch of young guys throwing a bachelor party for their friend. Increasing the embarassment quotient, the harbormaster in this case was a woman, Pier 39's Sheila Chandor. "They were all very apologetic, very embarassed, and stopped immediately," she recalls.
"Sea lions are smart — and they have a great sense of humor."
Fire in a marina (like this one in Ensenada) is a harbormaster's worst nightmare. If there's time, burning boats are often untied and cast off to prevent the fire from spreading.
In a large marina, this can mean multiple alarms going off around the same time each day — a bit like what happens in a clock shop at high noon. Occasionally, alarms signal a real emergency. Most harbormasters have stories about boats that sank or almost sank at their slips, and a few have fought fires aboard parked boats. "One guy told me over the phone that he thought it must be the fire alarm going off," says Weaver. "He said, 'I guess you'll have to cut the lock to turn off the alarm. And I'd appreciate it if you'd check for a fire while you're down there.'" No problem, sir.
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LYNN BRADSHAW
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es, a good part of a typical harbormaster's weekly routine is dealing with tenant complaints: so-and-so took my hose and didn't return it; those people on thus-and-such boat are playing music too loud; or the halyard on the boat next door is slapping. Occasionally, there's a fresh twist on the theme, such as the one involving a well-known San Francisco restaurant whose windows looked out onto a marina. One night the patrons got a bit more ambiance than they'd bargained for: some boaters in the marina were using a sail as a movie screen and the film was, shall we say, 'not appropriate for children.' The restaurant called the harbor-
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larms going off are also common. Many modern boats are festooned with alarms — for fire, carbon monoxide, high water, low oil pressure, etc. People often leave them on when the leave the boat, and every so often they go off. Unless the boat is obviously sinking or on fire, the harbormaster has to play a bit of a guessing game as to why. "The first thing we do is call the owner," says Marina Village's Alan Weaver. "If it's not an emergency, they'll often come down to deal with it." Fortunately, most of the alarms turn out to be something benign. Probably the most common alarm heard in a marina is for carbon monoxide, which can build up inside a closed up boat while charging (or overcharging) batteries. Another alarm, heard regularly during the extreme tides of winter, is for shallow water. Boaters set these while underway to alert them when they're getting into shallow areas. And they forget to turn them off. So sometimes, during an extreme low tide, the water under a parked boat gets so 'thin' that the alarm goes off.
ctual boat fires in a marina are, in the words of Vallejo Municipal Marina's Jim Hausener, "a harbormaster's worst nightmare." They are often hard to fight, they can spread to neighboring boats or docks, and there can
