Sponsored by

Mary Swift

Oakland’s Lake Merritt Boating Center was built in 1952 to support sailing clubs and offer sailing classes to young people and the community at large. The Center was so popular that it got maxed out by the early 90’s, so that’s when a bond was put together for expansion. $1.5 million was raised from the people of Oakland and the Port of Oakland, and with the further help of many private donors the Jack London Aquatic Center was built on the Estuary. It’s a beautiful facility, with docks for rowing and a small set of docks for sailboats. It’s going to really improve our ability to serve the people of Oakland.

I work with anyone who wants to learn to sail. Before I became a full-time sailing instructor, I worked in the computer field. I started sailing to balance the long hours and stress. It wasn’t very long, just a few years, before I was drafted by the Oceanic Society into teaching. It is a joy working with people who want to learn to sail, watching them find such great wonders and stress release from the great beauty of the natural environment, just as I did.

I’ve always wanted to create something for Northern California like the comprehensive sailing and marine education program at Orange Coast College. They provide affordable sailing education for the community at large, both power and sail. They even have boats that make a circuit around the Pacific Rim. They teach people in legs from Point A to Point B and learners join them for periods throughout the leg. They support the whole rowing community. They have a protected place inland plus a place right on the channel that leads into the ocean, just as we do here in Oakland. But we have something here that they don’t have down south; we’re close to the California Maritime Academy. It’s part of the California State College system and one of two major maritime colleges in the United States. I hope our Oakland programs can link up with Cal State Maritime somehow, maybe to train young people to be ferry captains for the planned expanded system.

One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that only rich white people can be sailors. We have the entire rainbow here, a kaleidoscope from all over the planet. In less than a year, we’ve served more than 1200 community kids, and when the Jack London Aquatic Center opens we’ll be able to do a whole lot more. In summertime, we have a camp for youth from ages 7-17. We have classes for all ages on weekends that are very affordable. 

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Wharfinger, Port of San Francisco

Brad Gross

I am one of four wharfingers for the Port of San Francisco. What we do is manage waterside activities for the Port, commercial shipping, ferries, fishing boats, excursion boats and so on. So, for example, if an excursion boat wants to go in Pac Bell Park for a landing, they’d call me up to make those arrangements. If an oil barge was coming up from Southern California and needed to lay berth for the night, they’d call our cargo guy for that. If the Navy was coming in for a lay berth, they’d call us for that.

The term wharfinger means basically wharf manager. It’s an old naval term from back in the days when all they dealt with were wharfs, from before docks or marinas. You wouldn’t hear it much in someplace like Southern California, where there are mostly small marinas. You’d hear it in San Francisco or Long Beach.

I am the wharfinger who takes care of the excursion vessels. I take care of Pac Bell Park and the ferry landing there, China Basin. I work with the recreational marinas – Pier 38, any of the excursion boats that are coming or going along the waterfront. I work at Hyde Street Harbor in conjunction with the wharfinger down there. Then I fill in just about everywhere else. The are three other wharfingers. Hedley Prince is Fisherman’s Wharf, Denise Turner is cruise ships, navy and ferries and Nick LaRocco is cargo.

I’m 40 years old. I came from Southern California five years ago, where I was the Marina Director for the oldest and most prestigious private club/marina in Southern California, the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. Dock rents there run $25 a foot; by comparison, at Fishermen’s Wharf the rent is $4 a foot. Before that, I was a private yacht captain. I came up here five years ago to be the Harbor Master for the Berkeley Marina and I spent five years there when I decided I really wanted to be working at the Port. So I started looking around to see what was available and this wharfinger position became available. John Davey brought me over last August and I am totally pleased and satisfied. I love being here at the Port. I love the diversity. I love all the activity

When I was young, I knew that I wanted to work on boats. For eight years, I was the captain on a private yacht. It was a wonderful lifestyle for a young single guy. I got to see a lot of nice places. Then I met my girlfriend, now wife, and decided it was time to settle down and have a family. To be able to stay in this type of environment and be stationery, your choices aren’t a lot. If you’re a yacht captain or a ship captain, you travel a lot and I wanted to be home. So you have to look and see what’s there. That’s where management comes in. If you want to work in the larger ship end, you need to go to a port like the Port of San Francisco. 

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Environmental Planner

Jody Zaitlin

I basically focus on two areas of environmental planning for the Port of Oakland. One of them is habitat restoration and the other is ballast water and invasive species.

For the habitat restoration project, I was the project manager for wetland restoration we did a couple years ago on San Leandro Bay. We restored 70 acres to a tidal and seasonal wetland complex. After restoration, the site was turned over to the East Bay Regional Park District and they’re managing it as part of their park.

I’m also trying to figure out what to do about potentially invasive species that come into San Francisco Bay in the ballast water of ships that is discharged in the Bay. This is an ongoing problem without an obvious solution thus far. The ballast water is used by the ships to keep them stable as they sail and steady and level as they load and unload cargo. The ships pick up this ballast water up in foreign ports, go about their business going to other ports, including Oakland. Usually when they arrive in port, they offload cargo, load other cargo and need to redistribute the weight. The way they do that is to readjust the ballast water, which is in a series of tanks in the ship. They discharge some of that ballast water into the receiving waters, which in this case is San Francisco Bay. That ballast water can contain microscopic plants and animals from the source location, , and some of those can become established. Some of them can possibly become a problem in this ecosystem. I’m part of a larger group that’s trying to figure out what to about it.

We work with the Coast Guard on the federal level and on the state level with the State Lands Commission and with a bunch of environmental groups that are active in trying to find a solution. The interim solution so far is to require the ships to flush out those ballast tanks while they’re at sea so they get rid of most of the water and the critters that came from those other port locations and replace it with oceanic water. The species in oceanic water are unlikely to survive if they’re discharged in the bay. So, that’s a partial measure. We think that ocean exchange reduces the risk to San Francisco Bay and other near shore habitats. It doesn’t completely reduce the risk and we’re looking for those next steps which might reduce the risk even further. The reason why it’s not complete is that for some ships, or under storm conditions, it’s not safe to perform that ocean exchange. The other limitation is on most ships, probably not all the water and all the organisms are flushed out during the exchange process, so there’s still some residual that’s still there and gets discharged into the receiving waters.

The environmental planning department is about 12 years old. I’ve been here about ten years. I grew up in Los Angeles but I’m an escapee. I went to undergraduate at Berkeley and graduate at San Francisco State. I studied Marine biology but I’ve been behind a desk for some years now. I’ve heard it called being an administrative biologist.