I recently had the pleasure of interviewing architect, activist and historian Michael Rex for a Sausalito Historical Society oral history. Michael moved to Sausalito in the mid-70s. When I asked what brought him here in the first place, his instant reply was: “The water.”
Here are some excerpts from that interview, edited for brevity and clarity:
I was taking the AC transit bus across the Bay Bridge to work, and I distinctly remember looking down on the ferry coming in from Sausalito. And I thought, that has to be a better way to get to work. So I said to my wife, “let’s move to Sausalito.” Of course, I didn’t know anything about Sausalito, but I did know they had houseboats.
We didn’t have any money, so I thought, I bet a houseboat costs less than a house on land. And that’ll really get me close to the water.
So we took the ferry to Sausalito. And I didn’t know where the houseboats were, but it was pretty obvious they were along the shore. So, I was determined to walk the entire length of Sausalito shoreline that day from one end to the other. And we got to this pretty funky houseboat community behind the Charles Van Damme ferry at the far north end of town. I’m not only attracted to water, but funky places. They have character and soul.
Michael and his wife Shelly lived in a few different houseboats in various locations until a disagreement with a neighbor convinced them to — quite literally — cut ties to the community:
I called up Rodger March, who had a Boston whaler, and I said, I need a tow. So he comes out, and we untie our lines, and he tows us out. I had purchased some giant anchors, and we became anchor outs. And it was the greatest day of my life.
Although he loved the freedom of anchoring out, Michael also discovered some downsides:
When Roger was hauling us out to drop anchor, the wind came up, and his outboard motor on his Boston Whaler wasn’t strong enough, and the wind was carrying our boat out to Strawberry, and we started screaming for help, and there was another anchor-out there. He heard us screaming, and he grabbed some lines, hopped in his rowboat, raced over to us, and tied us off to a piling at Clipper Yacht Harbor before we got too far out, and saved us. So he became a good buddy.
Eventually the couple tied off to the end of a temporary floating dock near the ferry Vallejo. As Michael recalled:
That’s further away from the freeway, so it’s less noisy, and it’s not as windy, so it’s warmer. And the rule of the waterfront was, if you’re the first one there, you get dibs, okay? And because there were no laws, you could do anything you want. Remember, everybody’s a pirate.
We moved out there for the spring, summer, and fall. I didn’t really want to be out there in the winter. My boat was a big box. It had vertical walls that would catch the wind. It was kind of terrifying in a way.
I would hear the wind coming, and it hit my house, and the house would shudder, and we’d pull against the anchors. In fact, one middle of the night, I woke up to a big crash. What happened? We had come loose from our mooring and crashed into some other houseboats. And I went, how could this have happened?
All my lines were cut clean at the deck. Somebody cast me adrift, and I began to think, wow, who are my enemies?
Luckily, the tide was coming in, so I washed ashore. What if the tide was going out? I had nightmares for months after, looking out our 12-foot bay window at the ocean swells. You can’t blame me, right?
I went out to retrieve my anchors, and I was relieved by what I found. They were gone. They cast me adrift because they wanted my anchors, because I had these monstrous-sized anchors, which are really expensive. I realized it wasn’t me they were after, they were after the anchors. Oh, okay, I feel better now.
But life on the water had its tranquil moments as well:
We look back on those days, and the first thing that comes to mind is utter freedom and self-expression. You could be and do anything, you know?
I’d come home from work to see that little jewel box aglow with the gas lamps. If the sun was still up, I’d take my kayak out and in minutes, I’m out there with pelicans and sea lions. The seals would be on each side of my boat.
I would look at the cars on the freeway, all stuck in traffic. And on a Friday night, I’d smoke a joint, go out there with the sea lions and the pelicans. And I guess I was a little smug. I’d look at all those poor suckers on the freeway and man, I had it made, right?
The one thing about being anchored out, as opposed to being tied up, when you swing on an anchor, which, of course, we all found out can damage eelgrass, because your anchor chain’s scraping the bottom, that big circle, which is one of the reasons the anchor out culture ended: its negative impact on the marsh. But when you swing on your chain, the light’s constantly changing. The view out every window’s constantly changing. You don’t get that on land. You’re floating, you’re always floating.
But that’s not the best part. There’s two even better qualities,
You’re among nature. You’re part of it. You experience it. I could tell you any day of the month what the phase of the moon was. It would reflect off the water on a full moon, and it would illuminate the entire interior of our house, so I could read a book by it, okay?
Yeah, you feel the weather, and sometimes it’s terrifying, but sometimes it’s magical. And the animals were all around us. Herring would come and spawn on our hull, and the water would be bubbling with herring. You don’t feel that intimacy with nature on land.
And the second best thing is community. When you live on a dock, you have to walk past your neighbors. You can’t just drive into your garage. There’s so many people who don’t even know their neighbor’s name. And because you’re all out there together, you have to cooperate. You have to help each other.
I’ve had three houseboats burn down next to us. You wake up in the middle of the night, and people are screaming, and you smell it, and the flicker of the flames. And you gotta get out there. You’re not gonna wait for the fire department. We’d untie a boat and push it out to save the rest of the community.
Next week: Michael’s unique design for South Forty Pier.