As though I needed another book!
A deeply personal nine-year account of the lives of the “anchor-outs”—an unhoused community living off the California coast on abandoned boats—that explores the struggles and resilience of those surviving on the fringes of society.
In the wake of the financial crisis, the number of anchor-outs living in Richardson Bay more than doubles as their long-simmering feud with the wealthy residents of Marin County—one of the richest counties in the country—finally boils over. Many of the shoreline’s well-heeled yacht club members and mansion owners blame their unhoused neighbors for rising crime on the waterfront. Meanwhile, local politicians accuse them of destroying the Bay Area’s marine ecosystem and demand their eviction. When the pandemic breaks out, a slew of city and regional authorities heed the call: they seize and crush the anchor-outs’ boats, arresting dissenters as they dismantle one of the nation’s oldest unhoused communities.
Kloc’s near-decade-long firsthand account of the joys, hardships, and eventual demise of the anchor-outs is in many ways the story of being poor in America. Examining the profit-driven policies that exacerbate the contemporary housing crisis, Lost at Sea weaves together tales of comradery and survival on the anchorage with the rich history of the region, from the creation of unspeakable wealth during the San Francisco Gold Rush era to the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906, when the first unhoused people dropped their anchors in Marin County.
Along the way, Kloc discovers the quiet beauty of the world the anchor-outs built: how they’ve learned to care for each other, band together to fend off real estate developers and NIMBY neighbors, and fight for a way of life that is entirely unrecognizable to those on shore. Lost at Sea explores the often overlooked world of poverty and homelessness that exists in even the wealthiest enclaves of America, where people who have fallen on hard times struggle to rebuild their lives among those who would rather just wish them away.
And the review from the San Francisco Chronicle
Zack Ruskin April 15, 2025 Updated: April 15, 2025, 4:36 pm - San Francisco Chronicle
Joe Kloc’s book on Sausalito’s “anchor-out” community initially began as an expansion of his award-winning Harper’s feature on the alternative society of boaters. But as the journalist delved back into the subject matter, he realized the narrative was a eulogy — that, thanks to an influx of regulations, the “neighborhood” of vessels on Richardson Bay was becoming a thing of the past.
“Lost at Sea: Poverty and Paradise Collide at the Edge of America” is both a highly specific account of one controversial community and a larger meditation on the nation’s worsening issues of social and financial inequality.
It’s also a reminder of the vital narratives that can only be told when someone is willing to devote their life to a single subject for years on end.
In its pages, Kloc expertly provides both a fascinating historical record of the anchor-outs’ ever-shifting form as well as dispatches from his firsthand reporting, which includes numerous nights spent aboard questionably seaworthy crafts at the invitation of folks with self-assigned names like Innate and Dream Weaver.
Speaking to the Chronicle via Zoom from his apartment in New York City ahead of an appearance at Book Passage’s Corte Madera store on Tuesday, April 22, Kloc confirmed that when he first discovered the story of the anchor-outs after moving to San Francisco from New York in 2010 (before eventually re-swapping coasts), he had no intention of writing an obituary.
“In the beginning, I could never have imagined this happening,” he admitted. “I don’t think I realized how close the end times were until I went to (Sausalito’s) Marinship encampment in 2022. Once I saw that, it felt like it was going to be impossible to recover the spirit of how it first felt to go out there.”
As part of his narrative, Kloc also traces the anchor-out community’s origins to the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, where a few of the 400,000 displaced San Franciscans opted to cross the Golden Gate Bridge to live aboard abandoned fishing vessels and ark boats left over from the Gold Rush. From there the area would turn into a major shipyard during World War II before later enjoying a heyday as a bohemian enclave where counterculture legends Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder and Alan Watts once hosted a Houseboat Summit in 1967 to debate which was better: dropping out or taking over.
“It was an unregulated, wild west of the water,” former Sausalito Historical Society president Larry Clinton, a 45-year veteran of the area’s floating homes community, told the Chronicle.
Early residents, he explained, were trailblazers of the floating lifestyle. After World War II, many returning soldiers used the G.I. Bill to enroll in the Bay Area’s highly touted art schools and moved into houseboats in Sausalito. This wave of creative settlers helped shape the area’s lasting artistic identity.
“The anchor-outs are absolutely a major part of Sausalito’s history,” Clinton said. “To omit them would be like excising the Warsaw Ghetto from World War II.”
Books How Sausalito’s bohemian community of boaters defined the ‘wild west of the water’
Greg