San Francisco Bay Tideline ferry Captain Glenn Williams and deckhand Lester Laboi received special recognition last Thursday from Senator Diane Feinstein for their heroics during a man overboard rescue in the cold waters of the San Francisco Bay the Friday before Christmas.
Tideline Marine Group is a private, small-boat ferry service operating out of the Port of San Francisco since 2012, and Williams has been a captain with the service for the last five years. According to Danielle Weerth, Tideline’s director of business development, the rescue occurred on December 20 during Captain Williams’ regular ferry route.
On that particular day, Williams was captaining the ferry boat Osprey on a route from the San Francisco Ferry Building to Berkeley with about 16 passengers on board. At approximately 5:30 p.m., just after the sun had set, Williams noticed a 26-foot sailboat about one mile from his vessel. The boat appeared to be unmanned, bobbing in the water out of the designated channel.
Williams considered that someone might be in the cabin of the boat, and decided to keep an eye on it if he needed to call it in as an abandoned vessel to the Coast Guard. But as he approached the Berkeley Marina, he noticed something surface slightly from the water.
“We see tons of things in the water, from seals to diving birds to tons of debris, and I thought it could be something like that,” said Williams.
But this time, he saw “what looked like a person’s head.”
As Williams’ vessel drew closer, he grew more certain. “There was this man’s face, facing up in the water, bubbles coming from his mouth. I thought he was dead, at first,” said Williams.
Williams stopped the boat immediately, put it in reverse and yelled “man overboard.” Passengers and the rest of the crew became aware of the situation as Williams tried to get the side of the boat as close to the man in the water without going over his floating legs.
“My thought process was, ‘get this man on board as fast as possible, because either he was gone, or we could possibly save his life,’” said Williams.
The crew, with the assistance from some passengers, began to pull the man up from the water using a boat hook, but struggled against the weight of his sodden clothing. Seeing this, Williams left the helm to run over, grabbed the man by the collar and heaved him aboard.
At first the man wasn’t moving at all, and a passenger who identified herself as a nurse prepared to perform CPR. But Williams stopped her after noticing the man’s chest moving slightly underneath his sweatshirt, inhaling and breathing in air on his own. Without seeing any obvious broken bones or major injuries, Williams and others present wrapped the man, identified later by just his first name, Bob, in blankets and stabilized him.
Once they arrived at the Berkeley Marina, paramedics took over and Williams notified the Coast Guard about Bob’s abandoned vessel, Angel, which he’d fallen from while trying to secure a dinghy to the bow of his boat earlier in the evening. Williams guessed that Bob was a bit older, maybe around 70, and that he’d most likely been in the water for at least half an hour, maybe more, before they had picked him up about a mile from his sailboat.
In a written statement, Williams said that the paramedics thanked him and his crew, saying that they had saved Bob just in time.
Williams has had a lot of experience doing rescues in the past, not just as a ferry captain, but also in his personal time on his own sailboat. He noted one occasion 10 years ago when he and a coworker helped save a man who had fallen overboard near the Golden Gate while trying to adjust a fishing rod.
While captaining Tideline’s ferries, Williams said he often rescues wildlife, such as birds. He also volunteers with the Marine Mammal Center on the husbandry harbor seal crew and with the seal rescue team.
As a ferry captain, Williams says that he and his crew do man overboard drills around three times a month. “Sometimes I like to surprise my deckhands or even my deckhands will surprise me by throwing a life jacket overboard, and we’ll announce ‘man overboard,’” said Williams.
He said their protocol is if they see a man overboard, they point at the person in the water, keep pointing while maintaining eye contact and describe distance and location. They’ll throw something that floats to the person and try to pull the person out with a boat hook. No one jumps in to get the person, because that just creates a multiple man overboard situation.
According to Weerth, in her five years with Tideline, the December 20 incident is the first rescue where someone near death was saved by one of the company’s captains. According to Williams, Tideline CEO and founder Taylor Lewis called him afterwards to thank him, and to encourage him to keep up the good work.
At last Thursday’s monthly Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) meeting at Pier 1, newly appointed chair of the board James Wunderman wanted to commend the rescue, and voiced his gratitude to Williams in absentia, who was not able to attend the meeting in person. “Want to really thank him for doing his duty, but doing it in a way that saved a life, that’s meaningful work,” said Wunderman. “And I think it really resounds to the point that when we create this system, we’re going to create the opportunity to save lives and provide emergency response.”
WETA executive director Nina Rannells added, “This kind of thing does happen out on the Bay,” she said, “The workers out on the ferry boats, this is one of the things they do, and we don’t really talk about it.”
Senator Feinstein and her husband, Richard C. Blum—an investor in Tideline according to Weerth—gifted both Williams and Laboi with dinner certificates for the Fairmont Claremont Hotel and Spa in Berkeley along with their commendation.
Williams said he plans to use the certificate for a dinner with his wife, either this month or the next.
