While the timing of a visit to East Brother Light Station might depend on the vagaries of the tides, once you get there logistics will take a back seat to the beauty of the surroundings and, if you’re lucky, the diversion of meeting interesting fellow travelers.
Our first attempt to stay at the East Brother Light Station bed-and-breakfast was thwarted by a King tide, but fortunately on our second try, earlier this month, my husband and I did make it onto the tiny island, which sits about half a mile offshore from Point San Pablo in Richmond.
The pretty Victorian lighthouse and fog signal were built in 1873 after it became clear something was needed to prevent shipwrecks from piling up in an increasingly busy maritime channel. Erratic currents and variable weather can make the San Pablo Strait, a two-mile waterway connecting San Francisco Bay with San Pablo Bay, challenging to navigate.
After a failed attempt to build a light station on the mainland, the federal government hired contractors to blast off the top of East Brother Island and erected one there. Now leased by the Coast Guard for $1 a year to a nonprofit formed in 1980 to save the property from demolition, the East Brother Light Station is one of only a handful of lighthouses in the country operating as bed-and-breakfast hotels.
A short boat ride, a bobbing ladder
Our early May visit began on the dock next to Sailing Goat restaurant at Point San Pablo Harbor. There we met innkeepers Rae Colvin and Danielle La Vigne, who had just taken over the post a few weeks earlier, to be taken to the island by motorboat. We were among 12 guests booked for that Friday night, a full house: three couples and a party of six celebrating a birthday.
The boat trip, a short burst of speed and spray, was educational. We saw an osprey chick perched in its nest high on a post in the bay; spotted a line of markers jutting up from the water that warn mariners about the sunken sailboats ditched there after being used in the 1955 John Wayne movie Blood Alley; and we heard about the research vessel, seen at a distance, that hit a sandbank and was abandoned until it was later claimed as marine salvage by “Bobby,” who now lives there.
To access the island, we climbed a ladder from our bobbing boat to a landing dock. While our hosts went back to pick up the second contingent of guests — the Coast Guard-rated capacity of the boat is only six passengers — we had the island to ourselves. The first impression, despite the wraparound views of San Francisco, Marin County and the East Bay shoreline, is of an isolated, charming, weather-beaten time capsule.
Colvin gave us a full tour of the property, along with some history highlights. The main house, with its gingerbread and scrollwork features, has four bedrooms, two cozy living rooms, a communal dining room and small gift shop. At the top is the watch room, topped off by the light tower and a galleried walkway. Also on the property is the fog signal building, a water tank and a rehabbed storage shed where the innkeepers live.
Guests get whale spouts, champagne and charcuterie
We settled in. One guest pointed out the spouts of a whale in the water to the north. Another reported it took her two minutes to walk the circumference of the island. Around 5 p.m. we were served charcuterie, cheese and sparkling wine at a big round table on the central concrete slab that constitutes the island’s rainshed. The only fresh water comes from rainwater caught in a cistern. Guests staying only one night, which most do, are asked not to shower.
For Richard and Linda Gawthrop, who live in Gettysburg, PA., the light station was just one stop on an itinerary that was taking them through several states. Although they only recently retired, they have been travelling the world for decades. This year they’re exploring their homeland. They had made the trip to the Bay Area on the California Zephyr from Chicago and have a Mississippi River cruise lined up for the fall. Richard said they were on a mission to make the most of life while they still could. As he put it, “retire with nothing to do and you’ll soon die.” An inveterate planner and amateur pharologist, Richard has identified four B&B lighthouses, and the couple are visiting them all. So far, the Heceta Lighthouse in Oregon is his favorite.
For dinner, we ate tomato bisque, a spinach and strawberry salad with a strawberry, honey and Cabernet dressing, a fillet of trout with asparagus and rice, and, for dessert, a slice of cheesecake. Most of the guests made brief excursions between courses to take in the glorious sunset from the light tower.
An innkeeping gig that’s not for the fainthearted
La Vigne and Colvin are the light station’s 34th innkeepers. The requirements for the gig are exacting — preference is given to a couple, one of whom must have a Coast Guard captain’s license, and culinary and hospitality skills are a prerequisite. The pair take a percentage of the inn’s revenue and they live rent-free, though the accommodations are spartan.
It’s not an undertaking for the fainthearted, even if it’s often described as “a dream job” on the many stories and social media posts that invariably appear when the position becomes available every two years (although many innkeepers don’t stay that long). Responsibilities include all the cleaning and cooking and the daily room flipping for an average of eight guests a night, four nights a week. The couple also need to haul everything they need — from gasoline to crates of drinking water and wine — to the island by boat and up a steep ramp onto the property. They shop for groceries on the mainland, and, though the bulk of the laundry is hired out, it still needs to be taken to shore and back. And they handle reservations.
La Vigne, who’s worked in the maritime industry for 30 years, and Colvin, who has held many jobs, including being a lifeguard and who knows her way around anything mechanical, say they often end up working on their days off. Asked what the biggest challenge has been so far, Colvin laughed and said, “learning when to sleep.”
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They told us they got 2,000 applications. We got another one from Thailand today.
— Innkeeper Rae Colvin
The couple were living in Santa Barbara fixing up their 67-foot boat to sail it to New Zealand when La Vigne saw the ad for the job on TikTok and, on a whim, decided to apply. The interview process was swift: one meeting by video-call where, La Vigne said, they proved they had the sense of humor that’s essential for the job, then a trip up the coast to meet members of the nonprofit owners’ board in person, including former Richmond Mayor Tom Butt, an avid historic preservationist who played a significant role in saving the light station. A storm and electrical outage made it difficult to get to the island during their interview visit, and then they were stuck there for five hours, but the pair took it all in stride.
“They told us they got 2,000 applications,” said La Vigne, noting that it’s unlikely many of them met all the eligibility criteria. Colvin said they are still getting inquiries about the job opening, some from as far away as the Arabian Peninsula. “We got another one from Thailand today,” she said.
Due to a series of mishaps, including another storm, their on-the-job training with the previous innkeepers was cut from about 10 to five days and only a couple of them with guests. Despite these challenges, the pair have more than risen to the task. They were unerringly gracious and professional throughout our stay and worked hard to be accommodating to all the guests. And, though the workload is considerable — the couple had had one full day off since they started a month before — they say there’s a lot to like about the assignment.
“You get to live here and have the privacy of your own island,” said Colvin. “And on our off days we have a mansion and we’ll hang out in the parlor and come outside when it’s not too windy. We have a workshop, which we’re both into, once we start getting more of the schedule down and have some free time to start playing with that.”
No ghosts but a gaggle of screaming geese
Jessika Barry, who works in accounts payable and who was visiting the island with her partner, Sam Durnik, assistant general manager at Selby’s restaurant in Atherton, didn’t realize there would be cell service on the island. “I wanted to be completely unplugged from my phone,” she said.
She loved the light station, though. “It’s a unique experience, and I feel like the island’s kind of falling apart a little bit, so I’m not sure how much longer the experience will actually be here. So I’m really glad that we came.”
Durnik agreed: “It’s very quirky, and I think it relies on the quirkiness of the people working here to really keep it going,” he said. The couple stayed in the inn’s smallest room in the fog signal building. It’s called Walter’s Quarters after Walter Fanning, one of the island’s first two innkeepers, who converted the original radio room into a bedroom for himself and is said to haunt his old stomping ground.
“But I think Walter likes us, we didn’t hear anything at all,” said Barry. “Just the geese who were screaming outside our window starting at 4 a.m.!”
Perfect setting for a murder mystery
On our second day, we woke up to uninterrupted views of the choppy waters and Mount Tamalpais from our window in the Marin Room. Gulls, cormorants and pelicans soared past, harbor seals popped their heads out of the water or lounged on the lower flanks of West Brother Island only a few hundred yards away. On the soundtrack: the automatic fog horn that goes off every 30 seconds.
We went downstairs to discover six of the 12 guests had disappeared, as had the innkeepers. Those of us left recalled the conversation we’d had over dinner about the island being the perfect setting for a murder mystery.
But there were no bodies. It turned out the birthday group had balked when they heard, the previous night, that the boat time the next day had been moved back from 11 a.m. to around 3:30 p.m. due to the low water level in the harbor. The innkeepers had generously offered to ferry them to land if they could be up very early for a window of tidal opportunity.
We, on the other hand, were treated to a hearty breakfast and a demonstration of how to fire up the station’s 1930s diaphone fog signal. Then we had a few bonus hours to soak up the atmosphere of this special place, with the best seats in the house for the Great Vallejo Race, one of the largest inland regattas in the country, and the sight of a colossal tanker gliding past seemingly an arm’s distance away.
If you go
Where: East Brother Island Light Station in San Pablo Bay off Point San Pablo in Richmond.
When: Open for overnight stays Thursdays through Sundays. Day use ($45 per person for up to six guests) is available on the fourth Saturday of the month during the summer..
Cost: About $475 to $525 per night per room, depending on the room and time of year; $2,500 to book the whole five-bedroom house. Price includes parking at the harbor, roundtrip boat transportation, hors-d’oeuvres with champagne, a tour of the lighthouse, a four-course dinner with wine, and a full breakfast.
To note:
- Reservations can be hard to snag during the busy season. Expect to plan at least a few weeks ahead.
- Guests must be physically able to climb a ladder from the boat onto the island dock, so it may not be suitable for anyone using a wheelchair or walker.
- Children under 18 are allowed only by special arrangement.
- No pets.
- Showers are available only for guests staying more than one night
More info: East Brother Light Station.
