If you’re planning on staying in the industry for any length of time you need to know a bit about piloting: the purpose, the law, the culture. The book “Crossing The Bar: The Adventures of a San Francisco Bay Bar Pilot,” by Captain Paul Lobo is certainly a good starting place. Maritime Pilots are significant in any seagoing port. Their positions are admired, respected and even honored. What Lobo brings to the table in his book is a series of sea-stories that he collected while working in the San Francisco Bay. Through his narratives and essays Captain Lobo shows us the life and attitude of a Bar Pilot.
Before reading this book I stood in awe of Pilots. Their position has always seemed like a worthy career goal – full of hardships, struggles and ending with the prestige of being a pilot. Their job has always scared the shit out of me. Watching cargo ships turn at Schnitzers has always made me pucker up. Their lifestyle seems almost mystical, like a fairy tale. The famous pier 9 Pilot’s station, the Drake and P/V San Francisco. The way pilots move about in person, their stances of confidence. And their demeaner on the radio, channel 13 and 14. All these elements made the realm of piloting daunting to me. All of these elements remind me that my passion for the water is the water, not the pomp and procession. “No thank you” to the pilot life-style, the big corporate or union gigs, $400k or no, I need more creativity in my day-to-day. By the time I finished Lobo’s book, I was reminded that many sailors are assholes, full of themselves, and while they make the maritime all the more amusing they also can get in the way of progress.
After reading Lobo’s book, I feel a bit less in awe of Pilots. While Lobo’s pucker factor stories are good ones, I feel like something is amiss. My expectations of the prestigious pilot were not met. Instead, “Crossing the Bar” shows us the life of a normal guy, struggling with ethics, burdened by social conflicts, and arrogant with a title.
Introduction:
There are two people who need to read this book: 1) any mariner on the San Francisco Bay, 2) anyone who wants an inside look at the life and work of a maritime pilot. And while these mariners will benefit the most, most anyone with an existing mariner vernacular can enjoy this read.
San Francisco Bay has more than a bit of history. Lobo touches on Drake, Ayala, Jack London and Mark Twain. One cool thing about San Francisco Bay is the breadth of marine activity happening. From the late 60s to present day Lobo sees the changes first hand: from lightships to radar. Lobo spins a yarn for us in each chapter, and sometimes with congruence he includes a bit of local history, sometimes he just throws in a quick and random fact at the end of the paragraph, as if his publisher required it. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of information you can pull from a guy while wasting away time on the bridge, and Lobo has 40 years to do it! One major objection I have to Lobo’s trivia is his geologic rants, that are completely wrong. The Brothers, Alcatraz, and Harding Rock are not granite! In fact, I can’t think of anywhere in the Bay Area that displays granite. There are outcroppings of granodiorite on Mt. Tamalpais and some in Point Reyes, though none of this rock is granite – which is different from granodiorite because it contains almost no potassium. The rock that Lobo is talking about is all sedimentary or metamorphic, and is in no way as hard as igneous rock, like granite. This islands of the Bay Area are all composed of rock groups found in the Franciscan Complex – mostly greywacke and chert. The importance of geology in sailing is major, though Lobo disappointingly misses this fact, as he misses other important aspects of sailing. I guess Piloting is a finely tuned set of knowledge – i.e. remembering 200 miles of chart – and has little to do with a well-rounded grasp on the environment – like true sailors need. But before I digress too much, Lobo hits on historical trivia of the Bay, which I found useful and entertaining.
Lobo states outright his dissatisfaction with the Coast Guard. He complains time and time again about the Coast Guard’s lack of response to major crises at sea. With a little review of Lobo’s statements, we can see how this author is a jackass hypocritic in this realm. First, the author acknowledges getting underway on a poorly manned and maintained ship that was aground at Richmond Terminal #4. He even states that he went beyond regulations and did not report the incident to the Coast Guard. It is piloting decisions like this that allow for bad things to happen to sailors. In obviously no-sail conditions, Lobo allowed this ship to leave the dock. If Lobo would have followed Coast Guard policies and a good moral compass, maybe the ship would have been flagged for a no-sail until a thorough inspection was made of the ship, crew and managing authorities. As it happened, the ship later that same month had engine fires and sent two of her crew to Davey Jones and another four to the hospital. As it happens, pilots, captain, agents and owners statistically don’t have to deal with the repercussions of faulty equipment and bad officers – it is sailors who statistically pay the cost for shit judgment calls. Thanks Lobo!
“Every time the steam-ship companies complain about our salaries, I wonder if they fathom how perilous our line of work really is,” says Lobo after he states that Pilot’s have the ultimate decision of whether to sail or not – and that they can make that decision because there is no economic incentive to move – unlike the incentive seen by the ship’s agent or captain. It is this hard decision to not sail that Lobo seems to not be able to make throughout his career, and instead he relies on the efforts of those who are on the dock and working on the decks. When storms hit Lobo complains that the Coast Guard is not there to save the day – “failing to do what they get paid for.” Maybe Lobo never saw an enlisted men’s pay check – but I did. The Coast Guard doesn’t exist to save your ass when you do something done at the risk of more lives. It places regulations on organizations and pilots to reduce unnecessary risks from being made. And yeah, I agree that climbing up a Jacobs ladder is hard and dangerous work (as an ex-coastie I’ve transferred to vessels in more treacherous seas then this jackass author) though this pilot seems to think only pilots make this climb? I wonder if I’ve climbed up behind Paul Lobo on the Jacobs ladder? During the end of his career I was making boardings at the pilot station with the Coast Guard on a regular basis – though I was in uniform with over 50lbs of gear on my back, a sidearm on my hip and a ten-pound vest on my torso. Poor lobo and his flock of fat pilots really do have a hard time climbing ladders no doubt.
In his chapter on Cape Disappointment Lobo states that “some two dozen” pilots have lost their lives, and he complained that the Coast Guard doesn’t do its job when the seas are rough. Multiple sources have scanty information involving deaths crossing the Bar at Cape @, though the general consensus is between 1200 and 2000 lives have been lost at the junction in the past 220 years. The Coast Guard list ten of its members specifically, who died responding to sailors who made a poor decisions to sail. If Lobo wants to talk shit about Coast Guardsmen, maybe he should save his argument for a time he doesn’t admit to making unsafe decisions which put other people’s lives in jeopardy. Pilots make the decision to sail or not sail.
And finally, as my conclusion to this quickly written and emotional critique of Lobo’s work, I think it is important for people like Captain Paul Lobo to share their stories. This guy is authentic. He jokes about his hypocrisy and his mistakes. He frames his coworkers and shipmates as assholes, jokesters, and the sailors that we all know. The steps he made to get to the position to retire as a Bar Pilot were intensive, and required the upmost dedication and sacrifice. While I don’t carry admiration for Pilots, after reading Lobo’s book, I definitely carry the same respect. They have a hard job that takes a lot of dedication and years of focus to be able to master. I’ll continue to pucker my asshole each time I see a ship turning in Richmond or the Oakland Inner harbor. As these larger ships cruise past MOTCO, pointed towards the UP bridge, I’ll think of Lobo, chain smoking and griping about his helmsmen who probably doesn’t speak English.
