Galen Licht, owner of the paddle board and kayak rental company Sea Trek, takes a motor boat out onto Richardson Bay in Sausalito Calif. on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. (Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal) 

Galen Licht’s flat-bottom boat glides over the gray-green salty waters of Richardson Bay.

It’s medium tide on Friday morning. Swirling below the surface are the tips of green eelgrass. The aquatic plant once lined the shallows off the bay’s shoreline from Sausalito’s Spinnaker restaurant north to the Strawberry Peninsula point — the second largest bed in San Francisco Bay.

Licht, owner of Sea Trek, a Sausalito kayak and paddle board rental business, turned off the engine and surveyed the shimmery vista.

“You come out here and you look around, it’s completely open,” he said. “There’s birds. There’s eelgrass, seals. Bat rays are beneath us. You get that feeling of being connected to this place so quickly within a three-minute paddle or boat ride.”

Open waters and a vibrant setting aren’t the only things he sees. Licht, who has spent years on Richardson Bay, says a community of mariners who lived for decades on boats have mostly moved ashore. Their boats and way of life, as anchor-outs, are mostly gone.

For six years, Licht said he has given rides to successive teams of social workers who have encouraged this transition.

“We were one of the first touch points for the folks residing on Richardson Bay,” said Zoe Neil, Marin County director for the Downtown Streets Team. “We really worked hard to build trust and rapport. Some folks were definitely more willing, wanting, ready for life on land. Others definitely were not.”

“The challenge and complexity of getting folks off the water was so hard because there’s this deep-rooted culture of people living on the water for long,” Licht said. “That’s one of the reasons it was so hard to get people to come off.”

“I didn’t rent for 24 years and I lived out on the water and it was the most beautiful experience in the world,” said Steven Alioto, who moved ashore to help a friend dying of cancer. Since mid-2024, Alioto has been living in a motorhome. “I gave up my house on the water to live here.”

Richardson Bay has had more transformation in the past 30 months than in the past 30 years. Three years ago, 62 abandoned and occupied vessels dotted the middle of the bay. In 2017, there were 220 such vessels. People lived rent free. Some boats were well-kept. Others were not or abandoned. Anchors tore up the eelgrass. Wastewater and bilge drained into the bay. Storms tossed debris overboard. Bay living was poetic but rugged.

Efforts to clear the bay of illegal vessels were fiercely resisted, prompting lawsuits and protests from boat residents and activists who said the movement exacerbated homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A concerted effort to press on involving local, county and state officials and agencies helmed by the Richardson Bay Regional Authority (RBRA) has overseen this transition. Downtown Streets Team’s outreach began a half-dozen years ago. Case workers would show up and offer anchor-outs help with supplies, health care, drivers’ licenses, Social Security and eventually making plans involving new housing.

“Some of the hardest things I heard were people transitioning because they knew it was time, whether they were older or had a medical condition or couldn’t actually physically do the boat life any more because it is tough,” said Laurel Halvorson, a Street Teams worker who visited weekly. “What they were going to miss most is living a way of life that is with the tides. You’re literally out there; you can’t step out your door and go to the store.”

The relocation efforts picked up steam in February 2023 when the Marin Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners — which includes the five Marin supervisors — approved a housing voucher program that tapped $3 million in state funds secured by state Sen. Mike McGuire. Before the initiative, the RBRA had a buyout program for boaters. The housing authority and its partners offered incentives to move into subsidized long-term housing.

As of late August, 11 vessels remained on the bay, said Brad Gross, RBRA executive director. Under a settlement with the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a state agency, boats that are not seaworthy cannot stay past Oct. 15. Two or three boats fit that description. The rest are seaworthy and can stay through October 2026 outside the eelgrass restoration zone. The state grant is spending $50,000 a month to subsidize housing for two dozen ex-mariners, Gross said.

“A good handful of people who are in their 60s and 70s have taken advantage of this,” he said. “It’s not as easy as it used to be, mainly because there’s not 200 boats out there anymore.”

RBRA also won $2.7 million in federal grants to begin restoring eelgrass, which anchors the near-shore ecosystem, and to clean up underwater debris. Its partners for that restoration effort include San Francisco State University’s Estuary and Ocean Science Center based at the Romberg Tiburon campus. The bay’s average depth is 6 feet. Eelgrass lining the bay bottom nurtures the ecosystem.

“People have been anchoring out there for 50 years,” said Gross. “There’s no record of underwater cleanup. There’s no eelgrass restoration. … But with this influx of the $3 million from the state, the $2.7 million from the feds, from NOAA and the other grants, we put this all together in 2023 to make all of this happen.”

Although some waterfront residents like Licht are wistful about the anchor-out counterculture’s disappearance, some local officials and marina owners see the relocation and restoration as long-awaited progress.

“For years, our residents, visitors and businesses struggled to access the full beauty of Richardson Bay due to the proliferation of boats on the anchorage,” said Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters, who represents southern Marin. “Now, with the number of vessels on the water reduced to 10 from 200, we are seeing more and more people kayak, paddleboard and otherwise explore and enjoy the bay.”

“Aquatic wildlife — from seals to otters — are back in large numbers because the eelgrass has been restored,” she said. “And we were able to accomplish all this in a compassionate manner by relocating individuals living off their boats through a safe, empathetic and collaborative approach. We are so grateful for the RBRA and all their partners who have helped oversee this transformation.”

“Sausalito’s waterfront is entering a new chapter,” said Curtis Havel, harbormaster at Clipper Yacht Harbor in Sausalito. “For the first time in years, there is a spirit of optimism among local marina operators who are now working with each other and the city to reimagine and revitalize our waterfront.”

Clipper Yacht Harbor is part of the Sausalito Sustainable Waterfront Association, which includes mariners, marina operators and business owners. Havel, the former RBRA harbormaster who long clashed with anchor-outs over illegally anchored vessels, said the relocation and restoration efforts have improved access to the bay, ease of navigability and public safety.

“For decades, abandoned and derelict vessels anchored in Richardson Bay have degraded the environment and undermined the vitality of the waterfront,” he said. “RBRA has pursued compassionate solutions, helping transition vulnerable individuals on unseaworthy vessels into safe and stable housing.”

Those who venture onto the open waters say the transformation is tangible.

“What’s most impressive about Richardson Bay is the wildlife has returned dramatically,” said Wayne Aleshire, president of the Open Water Rowing Center. Brown osprey, black-crowned night heron and seals are back. Farther offshore, porpoises feed in tidal change zones.

“We’re starting to see a huge gathering of people who want to enjoy the water,” said Aleshire, whose rowing center will soon host athletes training for the Olympics. “We just had an open house. A whole bunch of people signed up because they want to see what’s out there.”

Paddle boarders head out onto Richardson Bay from Sausalito Calif. on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. (Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal)