AFTER 50 YEARS on Richardson Bay, no one has lived the free floating life longer than Ale Ekstrom, the grandfather of Sausalito's storied anchor-outs.

"He's been doing this longer than anybody," says artist Stephen Ehret, a neighbor of Ekstrom's who's lived on the bay for 40 years himself. "He's one of the oldest anchor-outs out here."

At age 76, Ekstrom is a survivor of the infamous houseboat wars of the 1970s, when sheriff's deputies forcibly removed most of the rebel houseboaters on the northern Sausalito waterfront to clear the way for developers to build a marina at Waldo Point.

"The only legitimate business Marin County has is real estate," Ekstrom points out one bright morning, sitting in the shade of a sail on the 22-foot scow he uses to motor back and forth between the mainland and the 63-foot World War II rescue boat, "Yesterday" (after the Beatles' song), that he shares with two cats.

"They're horrified that anybody would have any alternative to renting, leasing or purchasing property," he goes on. "That's why they have been so antagonistic to people living aboard their boats, especially anchoring out."

The houseboat wars may have been the most high-profile conflict that Ekstrom has witnessed, but since he first anchored out in 1960, becoming one of the first waterfront cowboys, he has weathered other harrowing storms, both political and actual.

"This is not a free ride," he insists. "When it storms, you have to pay attention or else Mother Nature will evict you without notice. Without my skill and experience, I would have been swept away in my own wreckage many times."

If you called Central Casting and ordered up a colorful old seaman, they'd send over someone who looks like Ale Ekstrom, a weathered, wiry septuagenarian with a ruddy complexion, orange beard and once flowing red hair, now thinning and going gray. On this day, he has on a faded brown work shirt, a worn wool vest, pants tucked into knee-high socks, a wide-brim straw hat and a jauntily-tied neckerchief. A Navy veteran, he still carries a silver bosun's whistle around his neck along with a Cub Scout pin he earned when he was a boy. When he speaks, he punctuates his lyrical sentences with "oh, good lord" and "good gracious," folksy remnants of his Midwestern childhood. He lives on $900 a month from Social Security and goes to the V.A. for medical care.

An erstwhile entertainer, he played the concertina and sang sea shanties in coffee houses and folk music clubs and bars until he quit drinking 11 years ago. Now he plays for fun, and, without too much prompting, breaks out his little Italian-made squeeze box and works through a lively 19th century hornpipe tune called "Off to California."

He and Ehret, his neighbor and fellow musician, met in 1964, when they were both performing on the local folk music circuit.

"Ale was the first guy I ever saw with long hair," Ehret remembers. "He had a long braid of red hair down his back. He was really cool."

By Sausalito Police Department count, there are 140 boats anchored-out off Sausalito. They used to be accused of polluting the bay with their sewage, but Ekstrom, Ehret and most others now subscribe to Empty Head Sanitation, a free "honey boat" service.

Over the years, authorities have put the squeeze on their rent-free lifestyle, but the old timers have endured. In the '80s, county officials banned boats from anchoring outside marinas for more than 30 days. In the '90s, they created two moorage areas for anchor-outs, giving them three years to find other accommodations. You can see how that worked out.

Now, rumors are rampant that the anchor-outs are being threatened by the America's Cup races in San Francisco Bay this year and next.

"People are feeling the vibe that they're all going to get thrown out of Richardson Bay because of the America's Cup," says Joe Tate, a pioneer houseboater who lives on the Becky Thatcher, an ark in Waldo Point Harbor.

"There's no doubt in my mind that they're going to do something there," he adds, believing the powers-that-be want to charge wealthy yacht owners to anchor off Sausalito to watch the races. "They don't want to miss out on making all that money."

Suzi "Q" Olson, who anchored out for more than 20 years and now lives on a boat in the Clipper Yacht Harbor, has heard those rumblings as well, but has learned from experience not to take them too seriously.

"Every decade somebody tries to gain control of the anchorage, and it doesn't really work," she says, taking a break from her job varnishing boats. "But with the America's Cup and everything, it's certainly on everybody's mind that they want to make a place for the spectator boats."

The first America's Cup World Series races begin on Tuesday, in an area of San Francisco Bay regulated by the Coast Guard ranging from the Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz, south of Angel Island, far from Richardson Bay.

"I haven't heard of anything up in the Sausalito area," says Chief Petty Officer Mike Lutz.

Since Sausalito Police Chief Jennifer Tejada joined the department a year and a half ago, the department has acquired a 26-foot safe boat and has beefed up patrols of the waterfront in a concerted effort to crack down on criminal activity.

"There are about 35 anchor-outs who are frequently in contact with law enforcement," she maintains. "Mostly it's over theft from other boats, damage to other boats, fighting, drinking, drugs, possession of firearms and other weapons. I have zero tolerance for those committing crimes. You have a right to live where you want to as long as you're peaceful and lawful."

At the same time, she has formed a partnership with the county's health and human services department to have nurse interns administer flu shots and deliver emergency care packages to what she considers a marginalized, under-served community. She's also worked with the county's veterans services coordinator to identify anchor-out military veterans who qualify for services. Two months ago, she met with anchor-out representatives and plans to meet with them again.

"My primary objective is to bridge the gap between that community and us," she says. "It's an attempt to break down barriers to communication."

She insists that none of this has anything to do with the America's Cup. "We try to give them the truth and address those rumors," she says.

In the meantime, life on the water for Ale Ekstrom and his neighbors goes on as it has for more than five decades.

"I never feel so religious as I feel when I'm alone on my boat," he says reverentially, reciting by heart a poem he wrote some years ago about his beloved bay. Titled "Ale's Ode," it goes:

"Every day is God's day on Richardson Bay, worshipping on the water/Bobbing about with bottles and boats for more than a century's quarter/Dozens of children in boats have been blessed, embraced by the waters so many love best/God grant that we never see the day when there's no free anchorage on Richardson Bay."

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