Raccoon patrols San Francisco Bay collecting, discarding floating debris

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SAN FRANCISCO (KTVU) --  For over 50 years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has relied on a unique boat to bolster maritime safety.

 The Raccoon -- named after the Raccoon Strait in the San Francisco Bay -- is one of two vessels that patrol the bay, collecting debris, garbage and other obstacles that can be hazardous for thousands of other mariners.

 Joe McCormick has been at the helm of the Raccoon for over 20 years.

 “It’s like following crumbs,” he said. “You follow the smaller pieces to the larger pieces.”

 The unique bow stands out from the rest.  And the vessel can be steered directly into floating debris to collect potential hazards.

Dustin Rose, the deck leader, describes the boat as “the vacuum of the bay.”

The larger floating objects that weigh up to 17 tons are reserved for a crane, which can pluck damaged boats or pilings the size of a telephone pole. 

 “A lot of the time we’ll come up on something that looks like maybe just a twig sticking up out of the ground (and) we’ll find a 100-foot tree underneath it,” said Joe Rakstins, the chief engineer of the Raccoon. “You know that is the real danger for ferry boats.”

 San Francisco Bay had been relatively clean over the past few months. But recent storms have pushed debris back into the water, which means the Raccoon is now heading in to its busy season.  The storms redistribute objects from the delta and the bay shoreline.

 In its current iteration, the Raccoon’s sole purpose is to remove foreign objects from the bay. But the boat had a different mission in a previous life: It was a Navy vessel called YSD-14. 

During that lifetime, the boat had a wartime role.

 “It was a seaplane wrecking derrick,” McCormick said.

Back in the 1940s, during the war, there were pontoon planes all over the bay, West Coast, and the Pacific. 

“This vessel would go out and pick up downed aircraft or aircraft with mechanical issues.”

 While the old Navy boat was in the shipyard for maintenance last April, the crew chipped through layers of paint to find a missing data plate that reveals more about the boat’s rich history.

 “I found the data plate with YSD-14 and when I looked that up on Navy records, I found that it was built in 1940 on Mare Island,” McCormick said.

 YSD-14’s story continues to unfold with that discovery.

 The boat has been awarded numerous military medals, including the World War II victory medal.  The boat was transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers in 1960 and has been a debris collection boat ever since.

 After 7 hours of prospecting the bay waters on a sunny October day, the Raccoon returned to its Sausalito home.  The hazards that were once floating in the water are moved to the shore and sorted.  The days catch amounts to 5 tons.

 From hoisting airplanes in the 1940s to collecting hazards today, the Raccoon is not retiring anytime soon. 

Out of all the boats you may see in the bay, the Raccoon is the one that does not have a destination.  It just has a mission, which resumes at first light in the morning.