Bay Crossings Afloat

Towing a Boat with Captain Brett

By Mary Swift-Swan

The engine cannot start. It is 2 a.m. with no other boats around. A weak 1-3 knot breeze is all we have to sail in to hold our position against a quickly building ebb current in nearly 300 feet of water outside the Gate. The rushing waters are already starting out pushing us back out to sea. Who do you call? Vessel Assist. Getting up out of a warm bed, driving to the Marina, and jumping into a boat for two hours to provide a jump to a weak battery might make a regular guy grumpy. Not the Captain of San Francisco Bay’s boating assistance service. By 4 a.m., we were safely anchored by Angel Island with the engine purring as it charged the depleted batteries. The towboat driver escorted us in on his way back to home port and left with a final wave. It is nice to have a friend on the water who is there 24/7.

What is it like to be on the other end as an operator for a recreational boating tow service? To find out, Bay Crossings went afloat with Captain Brett Eller, manager of San Francisco Bay for Vessel Assist/Boat US for a scheduled tow. After being welcomed aboard the clean and shipshape towing vessel, we headed out from the Berkeley Marina across the Bay to the Sausalito harbor to help a power boat owner get his vessel to a mechanic in San Rafael, then back to Berkeley. Towing fees begin at the port of origin and end when the towboat returns to its home port.
Underway, we talked of what it is like being a towing Captain.

BC: Do people you help appreciate what you do for them?
CBE: That is a touchy subject because for some people you can’t get there fast enough. Some are disappointed with a 15-minute ETA or they are out on the Tuna grounds, 50 miles out and can’t understand why it would take four hours to get to their location. Other people are very appreciative. I do make tips, (he smiled), and get a lot of verbal appreciation and praise too, such as compliments on my boat handling.

BC: What do you like about this work?
CBE: What I like about it is that it is very fast paced. Even though when towing someone you are making no more than 6 or 7 knots (1 knot=1.15 land miles per hour, 7 kn=8 mph), both radios might be talking, and two cell phones going, all talking to you about cases. You see something new every day. The weather is always different. The situations are always different. No two days are alike. The first call in the morning is always different. The job is pretty cool. It doesn’t usually get boring. What is boring to me is a tow from San Francisco to Stockton, which is a 14-hour tow.The USCG doesn’t allow towing for more than eight hours without two Captains, so it is usually accomplished in two days. That makes for easy days but I’d rather be in San Francisco Bay with three calls stacked on top of one another, running from one situation to the next. Weekdays are mixed with scheduled tows, but weekends are always busy.

Brett was a “Pinhead” who traded washing boats for the chance to go fishing on charter boats at age 11. He was hired as a deckhand at 13. When still under 18, he was given the opportunity to learn to drive the 65-foot fishing charter boats. Brett became quite good at it. He took the tests and was given his first Captain’s license at 18, which is very special. USCG regulations on age only allow a provisional license at 18 normally, making young boaters wait until 19 for a full license. Brett did not push. The USCG chose to give it to him. He must have impressed the station Lieutenant. He graduates from CMA this May with a 3rd Mate’s license. His ultimate goal is to work on tractor tugs either in Long Beach, San Francisco Bay, or Puget Sound. “Maybe later in life I’ll be a Harbor Pilot, but tugs are my first love.”

Captain Brett is impressive. At “nearly 23,” Brett has worked for Vessel Assist for close to four years after officially driving the Fishing boat for one year. When he decided he wanted to do more with boats, he enrolled at Cal Maritime in Vallejo. Originally from Southern California, he is a self-proclaimed fair-weather boater. Days he loves best are the sunny and pleasant days with lots of action to keep it interesting. “Heavy weather days are simply more work for everything we do.”
As manager for the San Francisco Bay fleet, he coordinates up to six part-time Captains on any given weekends with all boats very busy. The newest Captains are given the long tows. “It is less confusing for them than trying to deal with multiple cases at first. That gives them a chance to settle in and make a good days wage for their time.”

BC: What are some of the more interesting calls for assistance?
CBE: Just last weekend I got a call up in Suisun Slough for a guy with a 21’ open bow Sea Ray with three kids on board and himself. He said he was aground, which is fine. We handle those. I got to the area where I thought he was from his description, althought he did not have a GPS or anything. All I saw was a face peaking out, pulling the tules to the side. No boat to be seen. The skipper had been distracted by the kids and launched his boat up onto the bank clear over to the other side of the tules. We were able to pull him off. It wasn’t a case of boat handling that time but it did put our boat to the test on horsepower getting him out of there, that’s for sure. He had three sons on board. They were fine. He had a nick on the bridge of his nose from the dash. It was a glide up on the hill more than a collision. Good thing it was tulles and not rocks. It is something different every day.
Last Sunday in the Delta, a guy had been blown up on the levy in the night when his anchor dragged. He called his buddy in the morning to help him off. It was rough and windy. His buddy ended up swamping his boat trying. When we arrived, we had a boat on the levy, and one sunk below him. Both were 20-21-foot runabouts. We do salvage, too, so we helped both boats. It was still rough, so it is was a bit of a challenge.

I rode up on a guy responding to a call because of a dead battery. He was inside the Duxbury Reef (north of Stinson Beach). He had no idea what kind of situation he was in. If his anchor had dragged... We had to have the park service with their inflatable pull him out through the breakers because we could not go in there. After he was out, we were able to help him with a battery jump and get him on his way, a bit wiser.

I’ve seen some people put some big ol’ boats aground. There are a lot of groundings every minus tide including some beautiful boats. People pay millions for their boats, yet they don’t pay $30 for the chart or learn to navigate with one to see where they are going.

We get quite a few calls with dismasted sailboats. At least one a month. If the mast is hanging over the side of the boat, there is not much we can do other than let them use our bolt cutters to cut it free. If it happens in a shallow area like in the Berkeley Circle we can tie a marker to it and retrieve it when the conditions that caused the dismasting calm down. The important thing is to save the boom and get rid of the mast quickly so it does not do any damage to the hull. A rough broken spar can put a hole in a fiberglass boat without much problem. Many sailors have bolt cutters of size for their rigging and hacksaws aboard so once they have cleared their masts, their engine is fine so we never hear from them. We only get those calls about once a month.

Off Belvedere Point, we had a call from a frantic client. We were dispatched and got there within 20-25 minutes. The caller was so frantic the dispatcher couldn’t really get an idea what was wrong. When we got on the scene, the jib was whipping around but the boat looked sound. The owner couldn’t get the boat to go up into the wind to get the wind out of the sail because every time he’d try, the sail would catch wind and push him into a spin. I finally got close enough to talk to him. I asked what was wrong. He said, “My automatic roller furler is not working.” I called back, “Can’t you drop the sail to the deck?” and he replied, “I don’t know. Can I?” I said, “I think so.” Not being a sailor, I have learned a lot about sailing with this job. It worked, but we escorted him to his nearby berth because he was shaken up realizing that by not knowing he could just motor up into the wind and drop the sail, he’d spent all that time dodging boats and rocks being tossed around in 20-25 knots of wind.

There is always a sense of amazement in Sturgeon fishermen. When they run all their electronics and all their equipment all night long they are amazed that their battery is dead in the morning. It seems logical to me, but I’m just the towboat driver, you know. They go out for all night or several nights and frequently they are our first call in the morning.

One family was heading out for Cabo San Lucas. They started out from the Pittsburg Marina. They ended up getting a little out of the channel because they were distracted. They had three cats aboard and the cats were all seasick before they were even a mile and half away from their home port. They went aground, not hard, but were touching bottom, as they say. We were able to help them, but we all had to wait a few hours for the tide to rise before we could safely pull them free. They were laughing, and it was pretty funny. They were heading out with a few thousand miles to go and were aground in the first mile and a half. It felt good to help get them underway again.

As we arrived at the harbor, Brett tried the VHF radio without success. He picked up his cell and made contact with the boat owner. He had gone for a run and was almost back. We met at the boat, attracting helpful attention of four of the owners’ dock neighbors. As Brett side tied the boat tightly on the “hip” of his tow vessel, we maneuvered back and forth like getting out of a tight parking space in a parking lot. Coming close but never touching, we were underway to calls from the friends, “Great boat handling Captain.”