Sausalito’s ‘Taj Mahal’ Is Floating Once Again

After being battered, flooded and ultimately sunk during a severe storm this winter, an iconic Sausalito houseboat has been refloated. The Taj Mahal is once again sitting on her waterline at the Sausalito Yacht Harbor after salvagers raised the floating mini-replica of the 17th-century Indian mausoleum — one of the Seven Wonders of the World — of the same name.

Everything we’ve heard about the refloating of the Taj is from secondhand accounts. We know that Parker Diving Service was involved, but the owners of Taj Mahal are apparently keeping all details close to the vest. Here’s some of the scuttlebutt:

A few liveaboards at Sausalito Yacht Harbor said they’d heard that it was less expensive to refloat and salvage Taj Mahal than it was to demo and remove the vessel. One liveaboard pointed out the extremely tight quarters of where the Taj sits: at the end of a dock immediately adjacent to a breakwater.

The Taj Mahal’s Achilles heels were apparently the long, rectangular windows sitting just above her waterline.

We asked a Sausalito liveaboard of 13 years what made this year’s storms so destructive. Severe winter weather is obviously not uncommon in the Bay, but the direction of this year’s storms caused some serious problems.

“The worst storms came from the south, from Berkeley and Oakland,” the Sausalito liveaboard told us. “That was a bad direction, and very unusual. It wreaked havoc. Most of us turn the boat around to face the Nor’easters in a typical winter. [This year], the wind had a longer fetch, with swell and cresting waves. That kind of pounds things.

“That’s the kind of swell that punched out [Taj Mahal’s] windows.”

“We thought it was completely lost,” said the liveaboard of the Taj, adding they’d heard that pumps alone could not keep up with the water pouring into Taj Mahal’s innards. An apparent second attempt to save the vessel involved sealing the lower portion once enough water was removed by “blocking out” all the windows. (“Those would just be portholes in a boat,” the liveaboard said.)

Finally, salvagers were able to get ahead of the water coming in.

The Sausalito liveaboard community “all agree the Taj Mahal is an icon, and we’re pulling for it,” the liveaboard told us. They said that information about the salvage, and the extent of the damage, are unknown because the family that owns the vessel aren’t well-connected with the boating community.

“But everyone was pulling for it. We’re happy to see it floating again.”

There’s no word on the extent of damage inside Taj Mahal or if it will be restored (“Is there really an elevator inside?” a liveaboard wondered), but from the outside, the highly visible icon is back to some level of normalcy.

Kudos to all involved in raising a Sausalito icon from the shallow depths of Richardson Bay.