Our favorite waterfront citizen scientist, Michael Konrad of South 40 Pier, recently submitted a photo essay of his adventures rowing on the Bay to Latitude 38, the local boating magazine. That submission led the editors to interview Michael for an article they titled “A Local Mariner Aging Gracefully on the Bay.”
The article features photos of Michael participating in the annual Open Water Rowing Center regatta and at Waldo Point, rowing past the retired ferry Vallejo.
In the interview, Michael recalls buying a Higgins WWII landing craft in Sausalito in 1960 and towing it to Alameda and then to Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor, while a graduate student at UC Berkeley. He also tells of owning a converted WWI 26-ft lifeboat with a one-cylinder Higgins engine, a 25-ft sloop that he sailed all over the north Bay, including “an ill-advised effort to sail around the Farallon Islands,” and a 48-ft wood Romsdal fishing trawler, which he lived aboard for a year at Pier 39.
The magazine also describes Michael’s current residence, on South 40 Pier, as “The creatively designed and built (houseboat) Heron.”
Michael is a retired biochemist and professor at UCLA, who later studied marine biology. He told Latitude 38, “As a young man my hero was Doc Ricketts,” the marine biologist, ecologist and philosopher, and inspiration for the character Doc in John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row.
In 2013 Michael published Life on the Dock and gave talks about the book at the Sausalito Yacht Club, Spaulding Marine Center, and Sausalito Books by the Bay. Today he’s a frequent contributor to the Floating Times, reporting on the ecology of San Francisco Bay.