berkeley harbormaster

Can a Danish boatbuilder who spent 10 years running a private marina in warm, sunny Marina del Rey find happiness working for the city of Berkeley? You bet, says John Cruger-Hansen, who on January 1 celebrates his first anniversary as harbor-

Would you walk barefoot on this dock?

master of the Bay Area’s largest public marina.

That John would find the job of Berkeley harbormaster to be challenging, exciting, demanding, as well as frustrating, is no sur¬ prise to anyone who understands the move now, but it could be a superb one. This is an older facility and part of it needs to be rebuilt and modernized. Take the old wooden docks that some people think are the greatest. They are becoming splintery. Right now you can’t fold a sail or walk barefoot dn some of the docks,” said John.

When John took over a year ago, the Berkeley Marina was in the midst of a rehabilitation program that started in 1984.

“I took a very close look at the physical plant based on my knowledge as a boatbuilder and of wood rot. I started making numbers of papers and then called in the engineer on the project and a consultant. It did not pay to repair. The wood docks should be replaced with the state-of-the-art concrete thru-bolt system that will.last for at least 30 years. It might be a little more sterile, but it is more practical,” said John, who appeared before the Boating and Waterways Commission in November to change the scope of the Berkeley project from repair to rebuild.

He also wants to broaden the project to include other sections of the marina.

But his ideas don’t stop at just rebuilding the existing docks. There is a lot more he wants to see done.

“We have one of the best windsurfing areas around, but the facilities aren’t equal to it. There isn’t enough parking and the dirt parking lot is full of pot holes. There is no place for the windsurfers to shower. This is something for the future we need to

from the private (read — big bucks) to public (read — bureaucratic) sector. What is a sur¬ prise is that this 43-year-old amicable Dane thrives on the problem-solving aspect of his work To put it simply, he likes his job.

“The Berkeley Marina is a great marina

The Cal Sailing Club, a longtime fixture in the Berkeley Marina. my mind, it is totally worn out. The friction surface on the ramp is gone. It is as smooth as silk and it is getting harder and harder to pull boats out. The parking lot is gravel so you can’t stripe it. If the first one in parks cross ways, half of the parking is lost.”

Ai 1 nd the houseboats.

“We are probably one of the only marinas that have legal houseboats. They are in regular berths with just three-and-a-half feet between the sides of these boats. That’s just

c too close. The area should be developed His enthusiastic approach to marine| specially for houseboats with a big front yard, related life dates back to his sailing and | in this case, the water and wider walk-ways.” racing days in Copenhagen.

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“We came to this country to build models for McDonnel-Douglas, but what we really did was play soccer!”

i _____— —-77---;-7—-r—T~l7— If cynics think Cruger-Hansen is setting After college he went into a boatbuilding i unrealistic goals, they don’t know very much apprentice program, worked for four years : about the drive that keeps John going._as an apprentice boatbuilder, and then became a master boatbuilder.

“We developed a 27-footer from the ground up. It was a wooden boat, like the * Nordic Folkboat. We started with seven peo¬ ple building the plug. Two years later, when I left, there were 50 employees,” said John.

In 1967, John found himself in Southern

California — not designing and building wooden boats, not sailing — but working for

McDonnell-Douglas as an aerospace model builder. Probably no one was more surprised than John himself. He was there because at one time, old man Douglas liked soccer.

“Before the war, Douglas senior wanted to start a soccer team. The Danish soccer players were then and still are known world-

Berkeley Marina is one of the few with legal liveaboards.

wide. The only Danes he could get into the country, get visas for and employ in the air¬ craft business were boatbuilders, because of their skills as model builders. A number of Danish boatbuilders came over to be model builders. But what they really did was play soccer,” said John.

The soccer program went down the tubes, but the highly skilled Danes stayed. At the time John immigrated to Southern California McDonnell-Douglas had just merged and they were expanding. Work was exciting. He was a part of the Apollo moon project, as well as the development of the F-15 twin engine Eagle fighter-bomber. Then McDonnell-Douglas lost the contract for the space shuttle and John Cruger-Hansen lost his job.

A, . fter a short stint in property manage¬ ment, John went back to his marine roots and started working for the Marina City Club, a private 340-berth marina at Marina del Rey. The marina was part of a larger complex that included 790 apartments, a hotel, a private club, a yacht club and restaurants. As marina foreman, he was out doing repairs. But in two years he was in charge, with a title of marina manager-.

“The marina was a gold mine. There are 13 million people in the greater Los Angeles area and they all want to have their boats in one place, the one with the easiest access — Marina del Rey. It was difficult to be fair, be ALL PHOTOS LATITUDE/SARAH

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reasonable and not have the owners say ‘wow, we can add on to the rent and they are going to pay it anyway’,” said John.

For the first five years, John worked almost non-stop and had the marina running

Despite a lack of facilities for them, Berkeley Marina is popular with boardsailers. like a well-oiled machine. It became so effi¬ cient that John looked to professional organizations for challenging work. He was president of the Harbor Master’s Association, chairman of the state’s Boating and Water¬ way Commission and a member of the California Marine Parks and Harbors.

When the Olympics came to Southern California, he provided support for two years for the Danish sailing team.

“The marina was running so smoothly that 1 didn’t even have to be there. And I wasn’t, a great deal of the time. But I wanted to get into the thick of things, get into something where I could use my skills and my knowledge to get more things done,” said John.

So a year ago, he moved his wife and three little girls, all under six-years-old, to El Cerrito and he started commuting to the Berkeley waterfront. Ironically, when John was chairman of the Boating and Waterways Commission, one of the projects the State was considering funding was the Berkeley Marina.

“I was the only marina operator on the commission at that time. I had lots of ques¬ tions and I became intimately familiar with what was planned for the Berkeley Marina,”

i said John.

But what John hadn’t expected was the I culture shock when he moved from private industry to public service. What took a few

i days to decide and implement in Marina del

Rey might stretch out to months and months i at Berkeley.

AL 1 good example was John’s lightbulb war. At the Marina City Club, John switched all the incandescent 40-watt lightbulbs that burn for three months and then die to energy 5 efficient florescent lighting. Based on extenv sive research he went out and bought 300 : lamps at $40.00 a piece. The boaters and management of the Southern California 5 marina were very happy with the switch.

“In Berkeley, we have an Energy Comii mission. They said the marina was using too j much electricity. I agreed and then wrote up tj a purchase requisition for 25 energy efficient i; lights for testing. These were a little cheaper, li only $20.00. In the purchasing system, they ,'have to do comparison shopping. They r came back and said, ‘The lamp you are requesting costs $20.00. But we can buy !one for $5.00 from another company. It is an incandescent lamp.’ They know they won’t be hassled and they know that everything works for them,” he said.

“When I told them that the $20.00 one used only 7 watts and the one for $5.00, 40 watts, it didn’t compute. They said they couldn’t let me buy the one for $20.00,1 had to buy the one for $5.00,” said John.

But the netv harbormaster hung in there and finally, the energy efficient long-lasting bulbs appeared in his office.

Besides the concrete changes taking place at Berkeley Marina, there have been a number of subtle ones — mainly in the at¬ titudes of those who work in the marina.

“Service is extremely important. In private industry, if you don’t give your customers service, they will go somewhere else. If you don’t get up and go over and serve some¬ one, or if you make someone wait for 20 minutes, it’s goodbye. They can replace you. But in public service, it’s not that easy to get fired.

“We have just one thing to sell and that is service. People come in asking for a berth and are astonished that there is no waiting list like there had been for five or ten years. They had no idea that there are so many new berths in the Bay Area that you can go virtually anywhere and get a slip from the day you walk in,” said John.

So John began working on attitudes and actions of his employees — making sure they talked to a client at the counter and not from a chair, helping them schedule maintenance so utilities like water and electricity aren’t cut off when boaters will be at the marina on weekends or holidays.

“The most important part of a marina is that it is people’s leisure time and it is the most valuable and expensive time they have. We have to provide a service so that they can come down to their boat and be happv.

“People are astonished that there is no waiting list for a berth.”

John has also tackled the formidable task of putting the marina’s accounting system on computer. Will this mean that Berkeley’s tongue-in-cheek reputation of taking three years to get a deposit back on a berth will turn into marina folklore? John hopes so.

I s that it? Could he possibly have had time for anything else this year. Oh yes, John ran a slogan contest. To hear him talk, a marina’s not a marina without a slogan. The prize was a dinner for two and the

“You can't fold a sail or walk barefoot on some of the docks,”

Berkeley Marina became “The Gateway tq the Golden Gate”.

“Most marinas have a little bit for everyone, hut Berkeley has a lot for everybody. There are berths, sport fishing, * commercial fishing, a small beach, educa¬ tional sealife programs, a boatyard, fishing pier, restaurants and windsurfers,” said John.

In a way, the new harbormaster views the marina much like a teacher with a bright but lazy student. “There is such potential,” he constantly says. ‘This is going to be a great challenge.”