Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

San Diego Live-Aboard

Crabs, tuna and a guy named “Sharky”

40´ Piver trimaran in dry dock (from 2hulls.com)
40´ Piver trimaran in dry dock (from 2hulls.com)

It’s at the point of being rare, talking to a stranger in a bar and realizing, from the start, that you’re having an interesting conversation. I’m at the Harbor Bar (that’s Pillar Point Harbor to you, landlubber), taking a rest-stop from a short camping trip. This is a working fishing harbor and the bar is crowded with men. Standing next to the wall is a tall fellow with blond hair, mustache, beard, wearing a checkered wool shirt, jeans, drinking beer and talking to two buddies.

His name is Joshua Gift, he’s 33 years old, four years married to Christal, who has a seat at the bar. Follows is his story.

“I crab during the winter. In the fall, if there’s a tuna run, I work a tuna boat if I can get on one. Salmon fishing now. I’m on a boat called the Aurora. It’s a 50-foot, steel, Monk-type boat, capable of fishing for just about anything that you can pack in it. The boat I live on with my wife is a sailboat.

Sponsored
Sponsored

“What I want to do is get a live-aboard boat, cruise around the Pacific, and be able to fly home to my own salmon boat during salmon season. Fish one season a year. People are able to cruise the Pacific on less than $10,000 a year, easily. That includes airfare to go back and forth.

“I went to college for computer graphics, graduated with an associate’s. Worked, for a brief period of time, in advertising. Went up to Seattle for awhile, wound up living out of the back of my pickup truck. Moved to Northern California [Mendocino County], worked construction for six months. Somebody offered me an agriculture job, medical marijuana. I worked on a medical marijuana farm for three seasons.

“I started going down to San Diego in the winters. At the end of the third season, the owner picked up a coke habit. You can’t have a controversial business that is state legal and not federally legal, pick up a drug problem, and expect things to be okay. I decided to leave.

“To San Diego. This was 2006. I was at a party at Black’s Beach, which is just north of Pacific Beach. I meet this guy and mentioned I wanted a boat. He said he knew about a 26-foot trimaran — ‘I haven’t been on it, but I hear it’s in good shape.’ He told me to go to Pepper Park in National City and look for somebody by the name of Sharky.

“Sure enough, Sharky was there. Short, gray-haired, overweight dude with a little stainless steel flask full of rum and already had a buzz on at 8 o’clock in the morning. He said he wants $200 for the boat, a 1965 Piver trimaran.

“It was out at anchor, so I borrowed his rowboat and rowed out to it. I looked at it pretty good. The bottom needed to be scraped, but that only costs $40. I went onboard and found sails, found all the cushions, and they didn’t smell. There was a stove built in and all the parts to the boat, inside and out, were there. So, I gave the guy $200, he gave me the pink slip.

“I started working for another live-aboard. He supported his 70-foot schooner and family by buying abandoned boats in areas like Oxnard and San Diego. He’d move them to a friend’s dry dock in Santa Barbara. Fix and sell. I was one of the people he hired to move boats.

“The boats had to have sails. Of course they had to be floating. The inside didn’t matter. I brought my own sleeping bag and oftentimes sleeping mat. They had to have a rudder and a way to steer. And a way to get the sails up. I’d get $200 for a trip, made 20 trips for him over the course of a year.

“Other than that, I sailed from place to place in my own boat. The rules of anchoring around San Diego were tough. You couldn’t be out at anchor for more than 72 hours. You could stay for 72 hours in Mission Bay, Glorietta Bay, A-8 Anchorage, and a few other places. When you left one spot you couldn’t go back there for a week.

“You have to know what you’re doing. You have to know what to do in case of an emergency. Three o’clock in the morning, you wake up because the bilge alarm is going off. Get out of bed into a foot-and-a-half of water. The bilge alarm suddenly quits because the water got over the battery and you need to find the leak and get as much water out of the boat as possible. In the dark.”

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Haunted Trail of Balboa Park, ZZ Top, Gem Diego Show

Events October 31-November 2, 2024
Next Article

WAV College Church reminds kids that time is short

College is a formational time for decisions about belief
40´ Piver trimaran in dry dock (from 2hulls.com)
40´ Piver trimaran in dry dock (from 2hulls.com)

It’s at the point of being rare, talking to a stranger in a bar and realizing, from the start, that you’re having an interesting conversation. I’m at the Harbor Bar (that’s Pillar Point Harbor to you, landlubber), taking a rest-stop from a short camping trip. This is a working fishing harbor and the bar is crowded with men. Standing next to the wall is a tall fellow with blond hair, mustache, beard, wearing a checkered wool shirt, jeans, drinking beer and talking to two buddies.

His name is Joshua Gift, he’s 33 years old, four years married to Christal, who has a seat at the bar. Follows is his story.

“I crab during the winter. In the fall, if there’s a tuna run, I work a tuna boat if I can get on one. Salmon fishing now. I’m on a boat called the Aurora. It’s a 50-foot, steel, Monk-type boat, capable of fishing for just about anything that you can pack in it. The boat I live on with my wife is a sailboat.

Sponsored
Sponsored

“What I want to do is get a live-aboard boat, cruise around the Pacific, and be able to fly home to my own salmon boat during salmon season. Fish one season a year. People are able to cruise the Pacific on less than $10,000 a year, easily. That includes airfare to go back and forth.

“I went to college for computer graphics, graduated with an associate’s. Worked, for a brief period of time, in advertising. Went up to Seattle for awhile, wound up living out of the back of my pickup truck. Moved to Northern California [Mendocino County], worked construction for six months. Somebody offered me an agriculture job, medical marijuana. I worked on a medical marijuana farm for three seasons.

“I started going down to San Diego in the winters. At the end of the third season, the owner picked up a coke habit. You can’t have a controversial business that is state legal and not federally legal, pick up a drug problem, and expect things to be okay. I decided to leave.

“To San Diego. This was 2006. I was at a party at Black’s Beach, which is just north of Pacific Beach. I meet this guy and mentioned I wanted a boat. He said he knew about a 26-foot trimaran — ‘I haven’t been on it, but I hear it’s in good shape.’ He told me to go to Pepper Park in National City and look for somebody by the name of Sharky.

“Sure enough, Sharky was there. Short, gray-haired, overweight dude with a little stainless steel flask full of rum and already had a buzz on at 8 o’clock in the morning. He said he wants $200 for the boat, a 1965 Piver trimaran.

“It was out at anchor, so I borrowed his rowboat and rowed out to it. I looked at it pretty good. The bottom needed to be scraped, but that only costs $40. I went onboard and found sails, found all the cushions, and they didn’t smell. There was a stove built in and all the parts to the boat, inside and out, were there. So, I gave the guy $200, he gave me the pink slip.

“I started working for another live-aboard. He supported his 70-foot schooner and family by buying abandoned boats in areas like Oxnard and San Diego. He’d move them to a friend’s dry dock in Santa Barbara. Fix and sell. I was one of the people he hired to move boats.

“The boats had to have sails. Of course they had to be floating. The inside didn’t matter. I brought my own sleeping bag and oftentimes sleeping mat. They had to have a rudder and a way to steer. And a way to get the sails up. I’d get $200 for a trip, made 20 trips for him over the course of a year.

“Other than that, I sailed from place to place in my own boat. The rules of anchoring around San Diego were tough. You couldn’t be out at anchor for more than 72 hours. You could stay for 72 hours in Mission Bay, Glorietta Bay, A-8 Anchorage, and a few other places. When you left one spot you couldn’t go back there for a week.

“You have to know what you’re doing. You have to know what to do in case of an emergency. Three o’clock in the morning, you wake up because the bilge alarm is going off. Get out of bed into a foot-and-a-half of water. The bilge alarm suddenly quits because the water got over the battery and you need to find the leak and get as much water out of the boat as possible. In the dark.”

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Morricone Youth, Berkley Hart, Dark Entities, Black Heart Procession, Monsters Of Hip-Hop

Live movie soundtracks, birthdays and more in Balboa Park, Grantville, Oceanside, Little Italy
Next Article

Haunted Trail of Balboa Park, ZZ Top, Gem Diego Show

Events October 31-November 2, 2024
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader