The Williamson family owned Williamson’s Garage, right next door to us down here, which is now the new Water’s Edge Inn. They had a little business down here renting out fishing skiffs to the tourists that would come in from San Francisco. So for 25 cents, you would a full bucket of bait and rod and reel and the whole thing. Grandpa would tow you out and take you fishing and move you from spot to spot. I guess Grandpa was transporting some convicts and the boat broke down so Grandma had to go out with Dad, who was then 7 years old, and tow them all in. Grandpa was known as Sammy The Skiffman by the people on the Island. He also ran the launch boats that went in between the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge when that was being constructed. I believe a man by the name of Johnny Blackfoot ran the boat at that time and Dad always talked about being very vexed about it because he was too young to run the boat and he really wanted to do that. At any rate, Grandpa passed away unfortunately quite young, which left my father and his brother and Grandpa. Dad did a whole variety of things on the Bay – running tugs, running dredges. He worked as a civilian for the Army in the War, running tows that carried airplanes up to the Delta. And after doing all these things, Dad came back when the State Park System opened Angel Island and he built the Gaycin, retrofitted it. On his first day, he made $7.00. He was charging then…I believe it was 50 cents round trip. He also was the first person to start the Elephant Tour, which is now the Tram Tour on the Island. My Uncle Charlie used to run it around the Island and tell all sorts of silly jokes as he went.

In 1974, he had the Angel Island built. Dad had the blueprints for the first jet cat on San Francisco Bay but he decided he didn’t want to do that so he opted for a more utilitarian vessel which is the Angel Island. He originally wanted for her to be a front-loader so he could just pull over to the beach and flop the front end down but that never came to be. But we did keep her flat bottomed in case he was doing Delta tours because he figured the less drag you had when you’re operating up in the Delta, the better it probably is. And that went along and as I grew up, Dad brought me into the business and taught me to run boats and now my son, who’s 5 1/2, tells me how to run boats. It’s funny how those things work.

No, I haven’t. I went to school to become an English major. And apparently now I can come to work and run ferry boats and I have very good punctuation and spelling for the most part.

Tiburon’s become a pretty swank place since the McDonogh’s settled there. Has gentrification helped or hurt your business?

That might be a better question posed to my father but I have to say that we have always been supported by the people here in town and we get an amazing number of people who ride the boat from Tiburon all the time so I would say it’s probably helped us all the way along. I don’t really think it’s had that huge of an effect on us.

See, to me it’s more of a passing, a watching old familiar faces either pass away or move out of town. The changes that I have seen, the new people: they’re just as nice as the people that were here before. They’re just different. ya’ know.

Finally, Maggie, you’re aware of plans for expanded ferry service and the creation of the new San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit authority. What does this mean to you? What do you think of it?