Lightship Relief

The lightship is beautiful and I’m sure that the tour is great if you happen to get one.
I’ve now been there 3 times during the posted hours and every time it has been closed. Absolutely no sign of life. The guys who work on the presidential yacht a couple of slips away said that they haven’t seen anyone over there in months.
Lightship gets the second star simply because Jack London Square is a lovely place to end up with nothing to do, so all was not lost.
I would suggest calling ahead to confirm that they are open before heading over… they very likely won’t be!

One of the best kept secrets in the Bay Area. The lightship and the tour guides who volunteer on it are delightfully quirky.
One of my favorite activities to recommend to friends, not least of all because it is not in any guidebooks, it is a complete insider’s thing.

What a great find! A FREE tour of a lightship relief boat that is basically a time capsule of 1973 (something like that).
The tour guides are volunteers and are offering these tours out of love which is clear. I’ve been twice now and both tour guides were amazing! Both times we’ve been able to walk right on and get a tour just for us. It is so interesting to see how the coast guard lived, the officers vs the crew etc. My absolute favorite part of the tour is the menu in the kitchen which shows a week’s menu in 1968. So fascinating to see what they ate (maybe its just me).
Good for kids 9 – 10 and older.

Walk the shoreline path from Jack London to the northwest, and frustratingly, it ends at a four-​foot-​high railing and you can only gaze toward the massive container-​unloading cranes another half mile or so beyond.
But don’t turn around yet! There is an official-​looking red boat moored there that at first you might assume is part of the fire department fleet, but then a small sign high up on its railing that either says «tour in progress» or «ready for tour» is the hint that you might be welcome aboard. If it says «tour in progress,» you could be standing there for quite a while, because a tour lasts about a half hour, and you don’t have any indication when the last one started. If the sign says «ready for tour,» don’t be bashful about asking to start one even if no one else is lined up. You might get a personal tour started for you on the spot.
If you love boats, then you’ll very much like this tour. If the idea of a tied-​up boat bores you, or you have someone along that needs multi-​media to maintain their attention, then skip it, because you mostly have to use your imagination to appreciate what this boat and the others in its fleet have been through.
The deal is that these boats were anchored off shore where there was no rock to build a lighthouse, but it was still necessary to have a navigation aid, typically to help identify the channel leading into a major port. Exactly when every other boat would head in for protected water, including during hurricanes on the eastern seaboard, these boats held on, heaving at their anchor chains while waves crashed over the bow, with their lights shining and fog horns sounding to define a position. Now anyone with a smartphone has GPS to figure out where they are to within 20 or 30 feet and so the remaining lightships make good museums.
Here’s a Google maps view of the boat that will help you find it:
. The nearest you can get to the boat by street is the turnaround at 1 Clay St that is next to the BevMo.
Everything about Bill B.‘s review of the boat is spot on, except I have to give a labor-​of-​love like this more stars. The tour is free (!) except for a request for a donation when you sign the log book at the end. The docents and other volunteers are maintaining this boat on a shoe string, and just one gallon of marine paint costs $ 50, so the value to cost here is off-​scale. On the other hand, I can see that a lot of people won’t find this tour exciting or even interesting, and Bill B. may have meant his rating to serve as fair warning for such folks.
Be sure to ask questions, especially if you don’t understand what is being shown, like how the anchor chain was payed out or how the engine is connected to the prop, and the docent will happily elaborate. Often a simple thing is subtle to appreciate.
One more tip: the boat’s plumbing is inactive. If you need to take a leak, there are public shore bathrooms a few minutes walk back toward the main part of Jack London. Do that before the tour. Even the docents use the public bathrooms, not the ship’s head.

If you want to add some history and substance to your playtime at Jack London Square, come up to the north end. Just beyond the USS Potomac and the fire and police department boats, you’ll find the permanently docked former US Coast Guard lightship «Relief» (WLV 605), listed as a National HIstoric Landmark. Tours are free and the docents knowledgable. It was interesting to see the innards of a workhorse ship type — lightships were designed to sit out storms and were therefore massively over-​engineered and –powered. The space isn’t as cramped as most Navy vessels, which makes touring a bit easier, though it’s still not appropriate for the mobility-​impaired; kids, on the other hand, will almost certainly enjoy it. For a nautically-​themed adventure, visit the Lightship Relief, the adjacent USS Potomac (FDR’s Presidential yacht), and then walk 2 blocks south to Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, a staple for mariners since 1883!
TRIVIA: Lightships served in places where lighthouses were impractical, and the approach to San Francisco Bay hosted a lightship station from 1898 to 1971. Lightships used a combination of lights, foghorns, and radio beacons to guide ships, though the advent of GPS has been rendering them obsolete.