I love Books by the Bay and always recommend it to guests. It's just across
from the coach parking lot in Sausalito.
By Carl Nolte, Columnist March 1, 2025 - San Francisco Chronicle
Sometimes it feels like the world is collapsing around us: Trump and Musk are on the march, the price of eggs has gone through the roof, and even the honeybees are having a crisis. Bad news everywhere.
I knew just what to do. I took a ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and a walk along the Sausalito docks to look at the boats. Sounds ridiculous. When the world presses too hard, why would you step back in a sort of mini-escape? It clears the mind, I told myself. It allows me to imagine adventures, to explore places I haven’t seen, to walk in the salt air. And besides, I like boats.
Like a lot of us, I grew up in San Francisco, a city surrounded by water on three sides. I’m drawn to the shores.
It’s not possible to visit the working waterfront; it’s too busy, there’s too much security, and it’s in Oakland. San Francisco and other ports have lots of small boat harbors, but the gates to the docks are usually locked. Only boat owners have the key. But Sausalito’s docks have public access, especially along a boardwalk just north of the center of town.
There’s a bookstore at the start of the boardwalk, surely a good omen. A sign outside offers a wish: “May the rain drops fall lightly on your head.” That’s not the message we get on the news these days.
There are several expensive-looking yachts for sale tied up nearby, and after that a row of mega-yachts, like showpieces, shining and polished like fine automobiles.
These vessels are clearly too grand for people who can afford only to ride the Sausalito ferry, but that’s all right. Here is where imagination comes in: picturing yourself one afternoon sitting in the sun on the foredeck, sipping Champagne.
But reality means walking out on the docks nearby, strolling past lesser vessels: here a classic vintage vessel, there a big racing sailboat and in between smaller boats with owners working on them, cleaning, sanding, overhauling the gear.
In my younger days, I would walk the docks on weekends, keeping a weather eye out for a boat I could manage, something that had promise, something for sale that didn’t cost too much, an older boat with style. A dreamboat.
Those old boats are mostly gone now, and the Sausalito docks are full of ordinary craft, made of fiberglass. But the wooden docks still move underfoot just a bit, and the boats are tied up, tugging at their lines, as if ready to go.
I took a little break on a waterfront bench and drifted off a bit. I could see myself between voyages, sitting on the stern of my own boat on a sunny spring Sausalito afternoon with a can of beer reading Latitude 38, the sailing magazine, about a San Francisco couple who left it all behind and sailed out the Golden Gate. Now, after salty adventures, they are in the South Seas, anchored in a sleepy lagoon on the other side of the world.
Meanwhile, on this side of the world, there was time to continue along the waterfront. Besides yachts, there are some houseboats in Sausalito. At the end of one dock is a houseboat that resembles a miniature Taj Mahal. It’s not open to the public, but last year it nearly sank in a fierce winter storm, proof that nature can turn even on a placid backwater like Richardson Bay.
There are surprises, too, especially at low tide. Much of Richardson Bay is marshland and shallow. At low tide, old pieces of the past sometimes emerge — and at one spot, where Johnson Street meets the bay, what’s left of the lumber schooner Lassen appears when the tide drops. The other afternoon two sea lions — a big bull and a pup — spent the afternoon sleeping in the sun on the old piece of wreckage.
Nearby are two interesting vessels, a replica of a felucca, a 19th century sail fishing boat, and the Southern Marin Fire District’s fireboat, ready to go in case of emergency.
Technically, the dockside walk ends at Johnson Street. But there’s more, just north, past a couple of restaurants with bay views.
There’s a newly refurbished waterfront park, all green grass and even a gazebo. After that, at the foot of Napa Street, the Galilee Harbor, a community of people who live aboard houseboats. There are 38 of these vessels, some of them in advanced states of decrepitude. It’s a small, tight community, “a funky band of artists, boat workers and families,” the Chronicle called them, living in a setting unique in the world. It’s certainly different from the rest of Sausalito.
Visitors are welcome to walk the docks at the Galilee Harbor. Even the dockside cat is friendly.
So that’s my mini-escape. Boats and a community of free spirits. Imagine that.
When the world is too much, find a dock on the bay
Greg