For the past nine years, Rob Barley has been a vessel master (in other words, a captain) for Golden Gate Ferry. For the past several months, he's also been the ferry line's safety, security and training coordinator.
Captain Rob Barley grew up around the water, he was in sailing camps before becoming a sailing instructor as a teenager. For the last nine years, he has been a vessel master for Golden Gate Ferry.
By Matt Larson
Published: August, 2015
For the past nine years, Rob Barley has been a vessel master (in other words, a captain) for Golden Gate Ferry. For the past several months, he’s also been the ferry line’s safety, security and training coordinator. You can generally find him at the helm on the early morning commute out of Larkspur at 7:30 and 8:45 a.m., and then on the evening departures from San Francisco at 4 and 5:30 p.m. Between those hours, you can find him in the office.
On his way to work from Petaluma, Barley formerly looked forward just to being out on the water driving boats all day, but with his new managerial responsibilities, he’s looking forward to even more. “It seems like every day I’m learning new aspects of the job,” Barley said. “As a captain you have to understand the general rules and regulations of what’s required of you and your crew, but moving into the office you have to understand it as a company.”
“We fall under so many different regulatory bodies—Fish & Game, U.S. Coast Guard, Cal/OSHA, federal OSHA requirements—you can imagine all the different agencies and learning how to comply with all the regulations,” he said. “Coming into this job I was very impressed with how well we’ve managed not only to comply, but also to go above and beyond the minimum requirements for safety and security with the limited resources we have. It’s pretty amazing.”
Barley is no stranger to the water, and it has been a part of his life since very early on. “I grew up on the mean streets of Tiburon, did the sailing camps, I was always in the water as a kid,” he said. “That evolved into being a sailing instructor as a teenager, and ever since then I’ve done nothing but work on boats.”
For a time he was able to take groups of people on shark diving trips by the Farallon Islands, a wildlife refuge about 30 miles west of San Francisco. “We put people in a cage, put the cage in the water with sharks in the water,” Barley said. For five days a week they’d leave the dock at 5 a.m. and wouldn’t return until 7 that night. “It was fun,” he said, “when you’re young and had a lot of energy.”
The Farallons are closed to the public, but Barley recommends visiting them any way you can, be it on a whale watching tour or something else—regardless, though, you can’t set foot on the islands. Still, he said, it’s worth it. “No two days at the Farallons are the same; the islands look different every single time you visit them.” He added, “You’ll see more sea life on the trip out there than most people will probably see in a lifetime.”
Barley also formerly worked at Angel Island. He’d take guests on a small boat around the island to give historical tours. To this day, he always looks for a special something there as he’s driving the ferry. “We go down the east side of Angel Island every day,” he said. “There’s one very old wooden structure that’s leaning at about a 30-degree list on the east side of Angel Island, and every day I look to see if it’s fallen over or not.” At this writing, it’s still standing.
If you happen to see Barley, or any other Golden Gate Ferry vessel master on board, don’t be afraid to introduce yourself. “We see a lot of the same faces everyday but we don’t know a lot of the names,” he said. “Because of the nature of the business we don’t get a chance to really take a lot of time to get to know our passengers.” So introduce yourself and strengthen the ferry community one handshake at a time. If you’re heading to or from Larkspur, Barley’s looking forward to meeting you.
