What People Say:

"Wedding on the Bay"

Mark Shaw, (author and owner of Sausalito Bookshop Cricket) July 2006

"Being married on the Gas Light was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for my wife Wen-ying Lu and me. The captain and crew are special people who warmly welcomed our friends and family and made our "wedding on the bay" a memory for us to always treasure."

"Skipper's Comments"

I have seen many people board Gas Light express their delight at the beauty and wildness of San Francisco Bay. We have access to the Pacific Ocean with a short trip under the Golden Gate Bridge, also we have easy access to the waterfront of San Francisco from Crissy Field past Fort Mason, to Aquatic Park, The Maritime Park at Hyde Street Pier, Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39 and Alcatraz.

I have seen families working as a team to raise sail and then steer and guide the vessel around San Francisco Bay. Technically minded people are fascinated by the strength and practical sense of the rig of the gaff schooner, and also the Detroit Diesel 671 that gives Gas Light her auxiliary propulsion. Our team building events where employees get to work raising sail shoulder to shoulder with their managers give workers a tremendous feeling of camaraderie. Gas Light has been a great vessel for marriage ceremonies, with unique settings at Angel Island and Paridise Cove.

Environmentally conscious people express their satisfaction with using the wind for their days activities. Students get to enjoy the peace of an afternoon away from the modern world. Everybody usually reacts with excitement to the sighting of a dolphin.

I enjoy the sailing on San Francisco Bay, and also I love to introduce the experience to others. I hope you get to sail on this working scow schooner.

Sincerely,

Captain John Cullen, (Skipper of Gas Light.) August 2006

"Comments from a sailor"

"I had a delightful time aboard Gas Light with you and Billy. You radiate confidence and care, a sound skill in a captain. Your interaction with the passengers is pleasant, firm and authoritative, but amiable. You keep a taut ship and seem to know which strings to pull..." Jan Adkins, (Author on Maritime affairs) September 2006

"A terrific schooner"

Latitude 38

"Boating dream comes to life"

John Nickerson, Marin IJ January 2001

"Fabulous new schooner"

Latitude 38

"Thanks sooo much!! What a super way to end the week"

S.Noakes

"A touch of the old-world. Charming"

J.Halmi

Newspaper Articles

Rob Morse, Chronicle Staff WriterSaturday, January 31, 2004

Sausalito man revives glory of workhorse boat Woodworker builds replica of old-time '18-wheeler' of bay

Sometimes it seems as if the only working boats in Sausalito are in corny paintings in art galleries. But there are some fishing boats among the yachts, and there's also a working boat that seems to have sailed in from a century ago, a scow schooner of the type that once carried hay and other bulk goods across the bay. This 50-foot vessel, the Gas Light, was built between 1991 and 2000 almost entirely by one man, Bill Martinelli, known around the waterfront as "Billy." Not everyone sells T-shirts in Sausalito. There are still a few old and middle-aged salts left, and the soft-spoken Martinelli has a nautical career that includes captaining boats for musician David Crosby and the late actor Sterling Hayden. And in building the Gas Light, Martinelli gave Sausalito the first large boat launched from its yards since the 1960s. "When I take people out on the Gas Light and they find out I built it, the questions never end," Martinelli said. "They say, 'You actually cut the trees for this?' " Martinelli laid the keel of the Gas Light and, with the help of a retired Canadian welder, did much of the welding of the steel hull (the original scow schooners were made of wood). He rebuilt and installed a diesel engine (which the originals did not have). He did all the woodworking, iron-casting and rigging and went north to a "hippie ranch," as he called it, to cut down two Douglas fir trees for the masts. The Gas Light doesn't carry hay, just charter parties. Accordingly, the interior has been comfortably appointed by Martinelli, a 57-year-old master woodworker and lover of Bay Area nautical history who lives in Fairfax with his significant other, Liza Keyes. He met Keyes while he was building the Gas Light, an endeavor so costly he had to give up his woodshop and Sausalito apartment, which the late actor Hayden had found for him. "I couldn't have done it without Liza," Martinelli said. "The old joke is, 'What do you call a single boat builder? Homeless.' " The scow schooners of the late 1800s were the kind of boats a hardworking man could fall in love with. They were broad beam and shallow draft, and about 400 of them crisscrossed the bay bearing loads seemingly larger than themselves. "They were the 18-wheelers of yesteryear," Martinelli said. While Leila, the ship's dog, waited topside, Martinelli sat at a long Honduran mahogany table in the spacious cabin and flipped the pages of a book by Roger Olmsted on the San Francisco scow schooner, which Olmsted described as "lovable and eccentric. . . . Like steam beer and the cable car, the scow was a minor civic institution." One old photograph shows one of these square-bowed workhorses carrying such a big load it looks like a haystack with masts. "They'd put the helmsman on a pedestal so he could see over the load of hay, and reef the sails to lift the boom over him," Martinelli said. Another photo shows dozens of these schooners at a dock unloading the fuel for what was then a horse-drawn city. "This is Mission Creek, where the hay wharves were," Martinelli said. "That is now McCovey Cove. In those days, it was a forest of masts." Martinelli said the Gas Light is a replica -- altered for hauling passengers -- of a schooner of the same name launched in 1891. "Gas Light was a modern name then," he said. "It would be like calling your boat Laser now." Martinelli grew up by the Cliff House and Ocean Beach, and the salt stuck. "Growing up in the city, I always gravitated to beaches and ships." At age 24, Martinelli became a night watchman on the Balclutha at the Hyde Street Pier and learned to make the canvas ditty bags of ancient seamen and tie all the useful and decorative knots. He learned that the Balclutha used to be called the Star of Alaska, and his mother told him his Norwegian grandfather sailed on the ship when it was registered under that name. "My skin sparkled," Martinelli said. At the Maritime Museum in San Francisco, Martinelli met an antique-ship restorer and tugboat captain named Harold Sommer, who noticed the young man had a gift for woodworking. Sommer recruited him for the restoration of an 1881 pilot schooner called the Wander Bird. During the 1970s, Martinelli sailed on the Mayan, a schooner owned by rock musician Crosby. "I sailed with David Crosby many, many years and survived it all," Martinelli said with a smile. In 1980 and 1981, he sailed with another artist known for hard living, Sterling Hayden, who made Sausalito his home. For two summers, Martinelli piloted barge up and down French canals for Hayden. "I'd be steering in the back, while he sat at a card table up front smoking a pipe and pounding a typewriter," Martinelli said. "We'd stop when it got dark and go into the nearest town for a simple meal -- a farmer's meal, whatever they had, and wine that didn't come off a wine list." Nowadays, from April through October, Martinelli takes sightseeing parties around the bay and charters the Gas Light to the Maritime Museum for its Explorer sailing program for kids. Eamon O'Byrne, who runs the educational programs at the museum, has a story about Martinelli that tells what kind of man he is and what kind of seaman. Last year, the Explorer program began using the Maritime Museum's Alma, a genuine 1891 scow schooner, to take kids out on the bay. One day in October, it looked as if dozens of kids would never get to sea because the Alma couldn't lower its centerboard -- a sort of a retractable keel for sailing through the shallows of the bay. "Billy was down in Santa Barbara with the Gas Light, so we sent him an SOS," O'Byrne said. "Without waiting for me to negotiate or discuss terms, in filthy weather he pushed back and was home in 42 hours so 10 groups of kids could go out sailing on the Gas Light."

E-mail Rob Morse at rmorse@sfchronicle.com

Article Source

Historic scow replicas show how things once were at sea Educational

Oakland Tribune,  Mar 29, 2003  by Suzanne Zalev, STAFF WRITER

REDWOOD CITY -- These days, a scow schooner is far more likely to be carrying school groups, partygoers or mourners scattering a loved one's ashes at sea than hauling cargo across the Bay.

But before there were bridges, scow schooners -- like the tall ships that arrived at the Port of Redwood City on Thursday -- were what "kept the economy moving," said Simon Koch, captain of the Gas Light.

The Gas Light, a replica of an 1890s San Francisco Bay scow.

A ship like the Gas Light might have hauled hay, grain, bricks or lumber around inland waters, Koch said. Scows would haul oysters from the South Bay to San Francisco and hay to San Francisco from points east, he said. They were built and based in Hunters Point and the site that is now home to Pacific Bell Park.