San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Water taxis make waves as fun way to see bay
Jot Thiara was sharing a water taxi heading up the San Francisco waterfront on a beautiful fall afternoon when the boat hit a small wave. The taxi lurched a little, and he got wet when a bit of salt water spray hit him. “I’m sorry,” said Roberta Marquis, a licensed captain who was the taxi driver. “That’s OK,” Thiara said. “It makes you feel alive.”
You don’t hear talk like that very often on public transit these days. But the water taxi business is unique. There are a couple of companies. The largest is Tideline, which runs smallscale ferry operations and on-demand service around the bay. A smaller company, San Francisco Water Taxi, has a three-boat taxi service on the city waterfront.
I spent an afternoon with Capt. Roberta, as she identifies herself. She’s the newest skipper with San Francisco Water Taxi, which has been running for nearly eight years and calls itself “San Francisco’s best kept secret.”
Water taxis are part taxicab, part ferry, part tour boat and all fun. It’s tough to beat a ride on the bay in a small boat from just north of the Ferry Building to Pier 39 or the Hyde Street fishing pier for only $10 a person. A trip a little farther, to the baseball park or a dock near Chase Center, is $20. There are six landings on the waterfront, all under the jurisdiction of the Port of San Francisco.
“Ridership is steady,” said Dave Thomas, who owns the company and has seen it weather economic downturns and the pandemic, which devastated the tourist business. He has three boats and big hopes. “In two years,” he said, “water taxis will be a staple of San Francisco, like the cable cars.”
I met Capt. Roberta at Pier 1½, at a landing just behind La Mar, a noted Peruvian restaurant. She was at the helm of Taxi Six, the smallest boat of the fleet. It is 26 feet long and can carry six passengers. Though Capt. Roberta wore the four stripes of a ship’s captain, she is also the deckhand, mechanic and tour guide. She was born on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe and learned to sail on the lake. “I’ve been around boats all my life,” she said.
She’s been a boat cook, deckhand, crew member and yacht delivery skipper, and also ran a Pilates studio, taught yoga, got a degree in electronics, and spent years on boats in the Caribbean. She has a master’s license from the U.S. Coast Guard, and when she needed a change of pace this year, she trolled the internet. A simple message: “Anybody need a boat captain?” “The San Francisco Water Taxi answered, and here I am,” she said. “I love being a boat captain. It can be stressful, but it’s fun.”
We took a run down to McCovey Cove just outside the baseball park. Sunny Sundays are glorious in the water taxi business, especially this Sunday, when the Giants are riding the wave.
But the other day, the taxi business was in a Wednesday slump, so Capt. Roberta ran the boat back to Pier 1½, tied it up and went out on the Embarcadero with a big yellow sign and a big smile to scare up some customers, much like a conventional taxi circling the block.
“Water taxi?” she called out. “Only 10 bucks! I’ll bring you back, too. I promise.”
It didn’t take long. Moe Baez was strolling the waterfront with Shelly Serrano, his special friend. They live in San Diego, and Baez had just gone to meet Serrano’s parents in San Francisco for the first time. He was nervous.
Serrano, a native San Franciscan — “born and raised,” she said — knew just what to do. Take a water taxi. “I ride it every time when I come home,” she said. She rode up toward the bow, holding a cup of coffee, her long black hair blowing in the sea breeze. ”I love San Diego,” she said. “But this is nice. This is an amazing ride.”
Thiara and his friend Jeffrey Garcia were at the dock when Capt. Roberta pulled in for the second time. They were spending the day on the waterfront. Thiara said he thought the water taxi seemed like a good idea for a quick run down to Pier 39. “Who wants to be in a regular taxi when you can be on the water?” he said.
“I’m used to Uber,” Garcia said. “But this is different.”
It sure is. Thomas, the company owner, remembers a day a year or so ago when one of the passengers asked if whether was OK if they cast the ashes of his uncle over the side. It was aboard a larger boat, and the skipper polled the other taxi passengers. As it turned out, the others were members of a choral group, who sang “Amazing Grace” slowly and with feeling as the man’s ashes drifted away. “Everybody cried,” Thomas said, “Even the captain.”
“So write a nice article about us,” Thomas said. “If you don’t, you’ll have to swim back.” You don’t hear that kind of thing on a Muni bus.