Forbes Kiddoo, who built concrete barges for the Taj Mahal, the Train Wreck and other houseboats before launching his own private island in 1980, has written a breezy, fun filled autobiography entitled San Francisco Bay of Dreams.
The 55-page spiral bound memoir has a forward by Bill Harland, a partner in Forbes Ferro Corporation and one of the developers of Waldo Point Harbor. Harlan describes Forbes as “friend, partner, artist, craftsman, hard-worker, man of strong values, and still curious and exploring new ideas.”
Forbes’ life reads like a cross between Tom Swift and Huckleberry Finn. He grew up in the basement of a pre-Civil War mansion in Brooklyn where his family served as caretakers. After high school, Forbes served two years in the Coast Guard where he did everything from cooking to recovering frozen bodies from a shipwreck.
After the Coast Guard, he moved to the Bay Area where he worked in construction and, in his spare time, built a customized race car that became a production prototype.
In 1968 he began building barges on old Marinship ways, where he also built his own apartment. In time he began constructing entire floating homes, including the Oyama Wildflower Barge and Sid Hendrix’ helipad home on Issaquah Dock.
Then one day he got the inspiration to build a barge100 feet long and 50 feet wide — and to turn it into a floating island. He launched the island five years later, complete with palm trees growing out of tons of topsoil, a sandy beach and underwater viewing ports à la Captain Nemo. His personal stateroom boasted a cobblestone fireplace and a bathroom with sunken tub.
After the Wall Street Journal did a front-page story on his creation, it attracted international media attention, making it a premier venue for special events . . . until the Bay Conservation and Development Commission cited it as illegal landfill. Forbes tells the story of a protracted legal negotiation which culminated in moving the island to Pier 39, where it began a 20-year run as a destination restaurant. Finally, when repairs became too onerous, he moved it once again, this time to the Delta, where he sold it, and it became a bed and breakfast inn.
The memoir ends with a recap of the times “I almost ate it,” in Forbes’ words. The last of these near-fatal misadventures occurred when someone cut his Shangri-La adrift. Here’s a lightly edited version of his close call:
I got up to take a leak and, on my way back to bed I climbed up to the front of my sunken tub to look out of the bathroom porthole. Instead of seeing the lights of San Francisco, I saw Mount Tamalpais. Right away I knew I had been cut loose from my mooring and was going toward the Golden Gate Bridge with the lights out. It was a mild outgoing tide about ¾ knots. I had no engine on the island at this time and no running lights. I was just going by the sunken drydocks and thought I could just push the island to them. I had my 17’ Whaler and pushed the 600-ton island to the drydocks only 50’ away. I had a glass of brandy and counted my blessings. I waited till daylight and borrowed a friend’s tug and pushed it back to the mooring where it was re-tied.
Forbes closes the book with a collection of photos and documents, and the grace note: “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” Today Forbes is “happy as a clam at high tide” in the Yountville Veterans Home.
Only a few copies of the book have been printed so far. Forbes was kind enough to share a copy with me, which is now in the archives of the Sausalito Historical Society.