Richard Ashlock has been a house painter in Hawaii, a commercial fisherman in Alaska, a garbage man in Lafayette. He has taught school, studied the impact of windmills on birds, managed a cattle ranch, played guitar in bands.
And he has done pretty much everything you can do to a boat: restored them, rebuilt engines, installed pump out tanks, changed zincs. He reckons he has done thousands of “bottom jobs,” the process of stripping and sanding a hull, repairing any damage and applying a multi-layer epoxy and paint.
Now Ashlock, 75, finds himself in a role that he didn’t ask for and doesn’t particularly like: He is Sausalito’s last authorized “anchor out,” a living symbol of a way of life on Richardson Bay that is being hauled out like a sloop past its prime…