OVERVIEW

With thirty-three years of marine experience, John Dervin has retired from commercial fishing, sea urchin diving, marine salvage, and buying, selling, repairing, and rebuilding boats. Dervin launched Survey Marine, an independent marine surveying business, in January 2000. Dervin has owned more than sixty diverse watercraft and has worked many others as skipper, deckhand, commercial fisherman, commercial diver, and marine salvor. Dervin has hands-on experience in boatbuilding and repair and has worked with fiberglass (FRP), wood, steel, aluminum, and composites. Dervin is a graduate of the Chapman School of Seamanship marine surveyor course (1999) and the Surveying Wooden Boats course held by the Wooden Boat School (2000).

MARINE EXPERIENCE

Marine Surveying In 1999, Dervin graduated from an intensive six-week/180-hour course in marine surveying at the Chapman School of Seamanship in Stuart, Florida. Dervin's more than thirty years of operating, owning, maintaining, and repairing boats as a yachtsman, diver, salvor, and fisherman have given him a wide base of practical experience.

In October 2000 Dervin successfully completed a course in wooden boat surveying put on by the Wooden Boat School of Brooklin, Maine, held at the Martime Museum at the Hyde Street Pier, in San Francisco, California. Dervin has relied on his own knowledge and ability to survey and appraise over sixty purchases. Years of buying boats to repair, rebuild, refurbish, or refit, for use and/or resale, and years of working as a commercial fisherman, marine salvor, have been an educational experience that has no parallel in the field of formal education. Dervin has had considerable experience repairing and outfitting power and sailing yachts, fishboats, workboats, and floating homes.

SurveyMarine.com An independent marine surveying service based in Oakland, California, Survey Marine is building its customer base gradually and methodically by producing high quality survey reports.

Safety A waterman, pilot, and diver with a strong appreciation for safety, Dervin continues to make safety a priority in all his endeavors -- terrestrial, airborne, and nautical. Dervin emphasizes safety as the number one priority in his marine survey inspections. Dervin lives by those old axioms "better safe than sorry" and "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Hands-On Experience Owning, Operating, Repairing, Refurbishing, and Maintaining Watercraft: Dervin has bought, refurbished, repaired, and upgraded for resale dozens of diverse watercraft. Dervin takes pride in the fact that every floating conveyance he has owned (stopped counting at sixty units), was improved and upgraded to some extent while under his care. Some of the vessel types he has owned are: workskiffs, runabouts, sportfishing boats, commercial fishboats, towboats, diveboats, power yachts, sailing yachts, houseboats, floating homes, military surplus landing crafts, and workbarges.

Dervin has either built, rebuilt, replaced or repaired every component found aboard a vessel including: hulls, cabins, decks, wheelhouses, consoles, engines, transmissions, reduction gear, couplings, shafts, logs, struts, rudders, stern bearings, throughhulls, transducers, propellers, swim platforms, winches, davits, bits, chocks, cleats, hatches, windows, port lights, rub rails, fuel systems, fuel tanks, water tanks, stoves, heads, holding tanks, batteries, wiring, navigation lights, spotlights, electronics (both navigational and communication), steering gear, throttle and shift controls, compasses, decks, masts, booms, bow rollers, deckfill fittings, commercial fishing, and diving equipment.

Dervin began learning the trade of boat repair while working at Jerry's Yacht Service at Marinship Ways on the Sausalito waterfront in 1971. Dervin maintained and repaired yachts, workboats, fishboats, and floating homes. Working with wood, fiberglass, steel, and ferro-cement, he learned caulking, refastening, prepping, and painting. He also learned how to inspect, evaluate, remove, and repair or replace planks, frames, rub rails, keel worm shoes,through-hull fittings, transducers, keel coolers, props, shafts, rudders, and stern bearings. Dervin also got his first hands-on experience maintaining and repairing marine ways cars and tracks, and did repairs on docks, gangways, and floating finger piers.

In the mid-seventies Dervin worked at the Peterson Yacht boatbuilding production facility in Greenbrae, California, where he learned fiberglass yacht hull construction hands on. Using polyester resins, core materials, and fillers, Dervin learned how to laminate hulls, decks, and other components. Dervin also has experience using epoxies for modifications and repairs.

Dervin has refurbished steel workboats and is experienced in the practices of sandblasting and applying protective coatings.

Marine Salvage Taking on and successfully completing his first salvage job in 1968, Dervin raised a 31 ft sportfishing boat that had sunk at its slip in Kappa's Yacht Harbor, Sausalito. Dervin has run scores of salvage operations during the sixties, seventies, and eighties.

Two notable examples of Dervin salvage operations:

In 1977 Dervin utilized a helicopter to hoist a Caterpillar diesel engine from the sunken remains of the F/V "Lincoln" at Van Damm Beach, Little River, on the Mendocino coast. On this job, taken over after previous salvors had failed, Dervin used his Zodiak, scuba equipment, and a Sikorsky helicopter to satisfy the time constraints dictated by the frustrated owner.

In 1985 Dervin ran a salvage crew that retrieved the badly holed 40 ft fishboat "North Sea" from the rocks where it had come ashore and sunk close by Chimney Rock, at Point Reyes, California. The already distressed and stranded fishboat was badly damaged by an inept salvage attempt the day after the wreck by an imprudent salvage operator using an ocean-going tug. The "North Sea" was jerked by the tug in a clumsy and failed attempt to drag her out to sea (at the lowest possible tide). She fell downslope from her upright rocky perch, heavily crashing onto her starboard side. She was penetrated by a large boulder; a gaping hole was stove in her from the waterline down more than two feet and almost seven feet in length. Not willing to accept reality, the tug operator continued to pull on the impaled "North Sea" until the tugboat ripped off a part of her aft deck. When the "North Sea" tipped from an even keel to lying on her beam ends, the nearly full fuel tanks shifted, disconnecting the deck fills and causing a diesel fuel spill. The location of the wreck was in close proximity to a sensitive federal marine reserve. Contacted by the desperate (and uninsured) owner 32 hours after the initial stranding, and 14 hours after the failed and damaging salvage attempt by the first operator, Dervin deployed a crew equipped with a large Zodiak workboat, an Avon R.I.B., a 20 ft surf dory, pumps, floatation, tools, patching materials and diving equipment. From a pool of available talent, Dervin hired Viking Divers owner Mike Christianson as a standby diver and Avon Surfrider operator and doryman Dan Temko (now Harbormaster and rescue boat captain at Pillar Point Harbor); salvor and marine engineer Rick Cogswell; and some laborers. Operating out of the lifeboat station cove (Drake's Bay) and launching through small ocean surf, Dervin's crew traveled to the wreck site by small workboat. Under Dervin's direction and USCG oversight, the crew contained, absorbed, skimmed, and pumped diesel fuel, lubricating oil, and hydraulic fluid that had spilled from the wreck. The casualty's electronics and fishing gear, was removed from the vessel at the wreck site. After securing internal floatation materials inside the hull, the "North Sea" was gently pulled from the the rocky shore (at the highest possible tide) using a small harbor tug. She was then towed to a more protected sandy cove where she was beached temporarily while she was patched and made ready for towing. The "North Sea" was towed San Francisco Bay where she was eventually rebuilt and returned to service.

Salvage Summary:
Dervin has worked for vessel owners by contract, bid, time and materials, or, as was his custom and preference, by buying the salvage rights to the casualty outright and refloating, repairing, and refurbishing salvaged vessels for resale.

Every salvage job Dervin has undertaken has resulted in a positive, successful outcome. Most notable, no diver, deckhand, or worker has ever been injured working on a Dervin salvage job.

Commercial Fishing Dervin has held a California commercial fishing license 18 out of the past 26 years. He has trolled, trawled, gillnetted, and dove the coastal waters of California and San Francisco Bay harvesting salmon, groundfish, herring, sea urchin, and abalone.

Sea Urchin Diving Dervin harvested his first sea urchins for the first time in 1978 and retired from the business in 1996.

Commercial Diving Dervin has spent more than two thousand hours working underwater over the past thirty years and has never suffered any pressure-related injury. He has performed underwater inspections, done surveys, repairs, marine salvage and sea urchin harvesting.

Boat Handling Dervin is an adept boat handler, specializing in the surf zone and "dog hole" environment associated with marine salvage and sea urchin harvesting operations. Dervin is very familiar with San Francisco Bay and the North Coast. Dervin operated his own small tow boats and has worked as a deck hand doing ship handling work on harbor tugs in San Francisco Bay.

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