Last of the Real McCoy

Time may pass slowly in the Delta, but it's catching up with the Real McCoy Ferry.

This plodding barge has been in service more than 60 years, carrying farmers, tourists or anyone else across the 200-yard channel between the muddy banks of Ryer Island and the city of Rio Vista.

The Real McCoy is a floating stretch of highway -- not to mention history -- every bit as important to the flow of traffic on Highway 84 as the Golden Gate Bridge is to Highway 101.

But these days, not a week passes without one of the ship's two six-cylinder engines, built in 1945, springing an oil leak. The hulls are dented from decades of bumping into docks. Paint is chipping off the pilothouse walls in ever-larger chunks.

"Everywhere you turn there's another (problem)," said Pam Gibson, the ship's deckhand on a recent afternoon as she waved aboard a truck full of Ryer Island farmworkers bound for a grocery store in town. "She's getting old."

Officials of the California Department of Transportation say the time has come to retire the Real McCoy.

They are seeking bids for a new vessel -- a bigger model that can shuttle 18-wheelers and recreational vehicles with trailers. Few companies make ferries anymore, so the new boat will have to be custom-built, with an estimated price tag of $1.2 million.

"It's not like you can just pull one of these things off somebody's shelf," said Keith Wayne, a Caltrans spokesman. Wayne said officials plan to christen a new boat by early 2009.

The new boat will inherit the name, which honors a former state highway engineer, George McCoy. But it likely will lose a unique distinction as Caltrans Equipment No. 0001. The number signifies the Real McCoy's position as the oldest vehicle still in use by the agency.

To find the ferry, take Highway 84 -- which doubles as Jefferson Boulevard -- south from West Sacramento. The road winds through farm country, over a bridge and past an abandoned grain mill before ending at a dock on Ryer Island. This is where the ferry picks up.

The free ride across Cache Slough takes less than 2 minutes. Once across, Highway 84 heads south to Rio Vista, where it ends at the intersection with Highway 12.

Anywhere from 50 to 150 vehicles take the ferry every day. The vessel runs nonstop, save for the occasional lunch and bathroom breaks for its two employees: a skipper and a deckhand.

On this blustery afternoon, Tom Barnes is perched in the pilothouse, a cramped room, about 5 feet square, with a console of throttles and switches and walls of peeling lime paint. From his skipper's chair, some 20 feet above the water, Barnes has a classic Delta view: A horizon of vineyards to the east. The steel spans of the Rio Vista Bridge to the south. Rivers and sloughs flowing like ribbons in various directions.

"You know the saying that the view only changes for the lead dog? That's me," said Barnes, who's worked on the boat since 1977. "It's a nice view, but it doesn't change."

That's not to say that the job is boring. Barnes said the McCoy's captain must deal with all manner of obstacles.

There's the wind: "They call it the Delta breeze, but it blows down limbs out here." Fog: "Sometimes, radar is all you got." Inattentive (sometimes inebriated) boaters: "We've got guys who basically pour Jack Daniel's on their Wheaties -- they don't know what they're doing."

Then, of course, there's the occasional flood.

The deluge of 1986 washed out large sections of Highway 84 and kept the Real McCoy on shore for three months.

Whales have been known to swim by.

The famously misguided Humphrey found himself in the freshwater sloughs near the ferry in 1985, attracting TV crews from around the world. Delta and Dawn retraced Humphrey's path earlier this year and fetched similar attention.

Ferries like the Real McCoy used to be a familiar sight on California waterways.

A 1968 Bee article described a "proud inland navy -- a fleet of ferryboats which navigated every important waterway from San Mateo to Redding and beyond."

But as bridges became more economical, the ferries went out of service.

Today, there are only two state-run ferries remaining, Wayne said -- the Real McCoy and the J. Mack ferry, which plies Steamboat Slough, a few miles to the northeast.

The ferries survive because they are much less expensive than building bridges over narrow channels of water.

The Real McCoy is a crucial link for the 300 or so residents of Ryer Island, who use it to get to work or shopping centers in Rio Vista. Taking the nearest bridge adds roughly another half-hour to the trip.

"A long time just to get groceries," said Adan Flores, a 21-year-old Ryer Island farmworker, the engine of his Honda Civic idling as he waited on the Rio Vista side for the ferry's ramp to lower.

Emergency services rely on the ferry, too. When the state proposed shutting down nighttime ferry service to deal with a budget crunch in 2003, residents protested, arguing that the closure would slow fire and ambulance response times.

Lawmakers, including state Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, rallied to the cause, and the state decided to keep the ferry open.

Wolk said it's high time for a new, more reliable McCoy. "It's an old workhorse. It's done a good job for over 60 years," she said. "But everybody recognizes we need a new ferry."

When the time comes, Barnes said, he'll be sad to see the ship retire. He joked that the boat is best-suited for the scrap yard. On reflection, he said it should probably go to a museum.

"I've spent more time on this boat than any house, any school, any other place I've ever been. Hundreds of thousands of hours," Barnes said. "You get used to it."

Gibson isn't so nostalgic. After all, it's her job to clean up all those oil-leak messes.

She said she's ready for a cleaner, better-running machine. And the sooner it arrives, the better.

"I'm going to miss (the original Real McCoy) a little bit," she said. "And only a little bit."