Boaters from the anchor outs movement go to war with Marin County for forcing them on to land

A small but determined flotilla of boat owners is ready to fight to the last sailor as wealthy bureaucrats seek to sink their way of life.Several so-called “anchor outs” in Marin County’s Richardson Bay refuse to leave the area as officials view them as nuisances to the environment and public safety.Officials want the boaters, whom they deem to be commanding “illegally anchored vessels,” gone, but at least one seafarer says he won’t go without a fight.“They’re having a hard time finding out how to get me out of here,” Chad Wycliffe told the New York Times.“They’re going to have to kill me.”Wycliffe, 45, has lived rent-free on the bay’s waters for decades.

He’s gone to tremendous lengths, risking life and skiff, to keep it that way.Once, when officials ordered him to leave, he sailed out to the open waters of the Pacific Ocean and stayed there.But the dangerous ocean waters made it difficult for him to travel between his boat and his skiff.Yet he’s fine with dying before local officials can force him to lose his sea legs.“I’ve lived this way for so long that I don’t really know how to live any other way,” he said.

“It’s weird saying that because people would think that, well, it’s more dangerous to live out here.”“Maybe,” he said.“But I’d rather die out here.”Wycliffe is one of the last holdouts of a floating community that once offered an escape from the Bay Area’s sky-high housing costs.

After decades on the water, the remaining boat dwellers face a final push to clear the bay.The crackdown has divided locals.Authorities say many vessels are dangerous, abandoned or environmentally harmful, while supporters see the campaign as another blow to Sausalito’s independent maritime culture.“The anchor outs are the edge,” Sausalito-based investor and sculptor Sophia Collier told the Times.

“Those are our saltiest residents.”The community dates to the years after World War II, when artists and veterans b...