Michael Evans

Captain of the tugboat William R.

I am captain of the tugboat William R for Foss Maritime. Hanson Aggregates recently owned the equipment but because of some legal issues with foreign entities owning American shipping, they divested to Foss. Good for all involved. Foss operates three dredges and the boats San Joaquin River, American River, and the William R for Hanson and has a proud maritime history.

We push a 230’ long “ suction hopper dredge” - a self contained barge with pumps and engines. When we are unloaded, the decks are approximately 12 or 13 feet out of the water but with about 3,600 tons of material loaded, our decks are actually a little bit under water. We drop a pipe down to the bottom of the bay and it basically vacuums sand off the bottom, pumps it up and deposits it into the barge hopper. Excess water runs back overboard, leaving only sand.
We dredge a couple of different types of sand. There’s fine sand along Presidio Shoals, off Crissy Field. Over towards Angel Island by Raccoon Straights, there is a coarser material that is quite popular these days. This has many uses in construction - asphalt, cement, and fill around pipelines. In the Bay Area, we are one of the top suppliers.

Without us the sand would have to be trucked quite a distance to meet the Bay Area’s needs. A lot of our materials go to special projects like the bridge repairs, the airport improvements, BART, housing developments, freeways… Everything we drive on or build has got concrete or asphalt in it or around it, and we supply quite a bit of it.

Sand migrates through tidal action, in from the Golden Gate and down from up river. Samplings show a layers maybe hundreds of feet deep. In the overall scheme of things, we don’t take out that much even though our barge looks big. It’s kind of “spitting in the ocean”, so to speak, as far as actually depleting material. It’s more ecological than adding more trucks to the highways, cutting the side of a hill away or digging a pit, or a quarry somewhere.

A crew consists of 2 Captains and 4 Deckhand/Engineers/Levermen. All are represented by the Inland Boatman’s Union. We live aboard for a week at a time. My watch is 6 hours on and 6 hours off. Monday through Saturday. I work all day, all night. And then a week off. I’ve seen many sunsets and sunrises, because we just continuously go. Thankfully we now have cell phones to keep in touch with home. Before cell phones, we were pretty much out of communications for the whole week.

I started in 1978, basically as a temporary laborer. A cousin of the then owner’s was my high school buddy. I was young and out of work at the time. They had bought a used tug that they were refurbishing. I helped replace all the wiring, plumbing, engines and everything else. I stayed on as a deckhand. After going to maritime school in my off weeks, I tested for my tugboat captain’s license. That gets you basically the right to drive the boat without the experience. You really have to drive when you can with the captain watching - giving advice, tutoring and mentoring you a little bit until you have the confidence and the skills, and the company actually turns you loose on your own. It took about ten years to become a captain.

Sometimes there are moments of tension. When you are on a boat and barge this size, you basically have no brakes. Sometimes your only option is to go with more horsepower and speed up to get out of a situation. Doing nothing will put you into peril - you can be blown into something, or the tide can push you into something. In the wintertime it can be tricky, especially when the barge is empty, sticking up quite a ways. The wind will be blowing one direction, the tide set the other way, and it gets a little squirrelly.

There are close calls every once in awhile. We have some highly skilled sailors on the bay, but we can’t read their minds. So when they’re on a heading that crosses our bow or on some kind of a collision course with us, maybe they know they are going to turn at the last second or do something different. We get to a point where we have to take action, then the other guy makes his turn after all, and we do a little dance.

In my time on the bay, I have noticed that the water appears to be cleaner. There is still pollution after heavy rains from the street runoff. You can see the dirt, oil slicks, and other discharge into the bay, whatever has washed down the storm drains. For awhile, those quart oil containers would show up by the hundreds. (People would change their oil and throw the containers down the storm drain.) But the waterfront in general seems to be cleaner as far as visible pollution. In the old days, commercial boat operators would just pump all their engine oil right over the side - night or day, as if it didn’t matter. Now all the operators are very concerned about pollution and the environmental effects of their daily operations. You don’t even want a drop to go in the water.

It’s really peaceful out there at 3:00 in the morning. There’s not much vessel traffic – no ferries or tourboats, maybe a few ships. It’s a beautiful time to be out on the bay. The Bay Area is 5 million people but we’re kind of left alone out here. It’s a nice world and a good place to work.