At a time in life when many people call it a career, Ray Carpenter, 65, president of R.E. Staite Engineering Inc., isn’t slowing down. He is constantly looking for marine construction and other jobs along the West Coast.

From helping to free a huge container ship stuck in the sand off the coast of Mexico to washing rocks in Alaska’s Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Ray Carpenter and his company, R.E. Staite Engineering Inc., are ready to take on the job. The company, a fixture on San Diego Bay since 1938, specializes in marine construction, but has the expertise and equipment for dredging and filling, heavy lifting, pile driving and barge towing. “Wherever the water meets the land, we have a job,” says Carpenter, 65, president and patriarch of a family business now in its third generation.

At a time in life when many people call it a career, Carpenter isn’t slowing down. He’s constantly on the lookout for jobs up and down the West Coast, since marine construction work has become less plentiful in San Diego.

“I still have energy and I like the challenge,” Carpenter says. “I look at people who have retired and they seem like they’re always looking for something to do.”

A ruddy, bearish man, Carpenter oversees his small company from a spacious office with a sweeping view of San Diego Bay. To the right are the gray ships docked at the 32nd Street naval base. To the left is the 24th Street marine terminal in National City. Straight ahead are the tools of Carpenter’s trade — barges, cranes, and tug boats. The company occupies five acres of land and six acres of water at its construction yard on Tidelands Avenue in National City.

Working with Carpenter are his sister, Cathy, who helped him build up the business after he bought it from his father in 1978, and his son, Jack, who represents the third generation of the family to work on the water. The company now employs about 50 people and has annual revenue of “under $14 million.”

Sure of his place in the world, Carpenter holds firm views, whether it’s decrying “short-sighted” residential developers who threaten the bay’s industrial base, or the lack of young people willing to train for well-paying trade jobs on the waterfront. After spending his workweek on the water, Carpenter is happy to leave the coast behind and head for his family home on Palomar Mountain, where he enjoys hiking and riding horses and motorcycles.

“We’re just a home-grown construction company,” Carpenter says of the firm where he began working decades ago as a field hand, and later brought his son, Jack, to work with him.

Jack Carpenter recalls his first job at the company yard as a young boy, picking up cigarette butts around the property. He has worked for the company on and off for most of his life, leaving to attend college and work for an insurance company as a risk engineer. That job entailed surveying large construction projects, sometimes from the air, and writing up reports about potential risks. Among his current duties at R.E. Staite, Jack Carpenter says, is assessing project risks.

He enjoys working at the family business because of the people, the waterfront locale, and the chance to observe and learn from his father.

“He’s a model to mold yourself after,” says Jack Carpenter, who admires his father’s straightforward and honest approach with clients and employees alike.

Like his own father, Jack Carpenter now brings his 6-year-old daughter to the yard on weekends, letting her watch while he drives equipment. She even has her own hard hat. “She loves it,” Jack Carpenter says.

The girl also enjoyed going down to the site off the coast of Ensenada, where earlier this year, R.E. Staite helped free an 880-foot-long container ship that had become lodged in the sand on Christmas Day. Cranes and helicopters were used to unload containers carrying electronics and car parts.

Ray Carpenter has lined with photos the hallways of his National City waterfront office, an office he created by recycling the New Zealand America’s Cup boat house that once stood across the bay on Coronado. Here he looks at an aerial view of R. E. Staite’s foundation work for the San Diego Convention Center. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

R.E. Staite worked as a subcontractor for a Florida company on that job, allowing its yard to be used as a staging area for equipment. Carpenter insisted that companies involved in the effort buy their supplies and gear from local merchants whenever possible, which resulted in “seven figures” worth of business to San Diego companies in the first 45 days of the project.

The freighter was freed in March when a special dredging ship brought up from Central America cut a channel out to deep water. The container ship, the APL Panama, was then towed to China for repairs.

Among the gear brought into R.E. Staite’s yard during the container ship salvage project was more than a half-mile of chain made of 90-pound links used last year to anchor oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Katrina.

The fruits of the company’s labor can be seen up and down the waterfront. They include wharves for the nuclear aircraft carriers Stennis and Reagan at NAS North Island, a public fishing pier at Embarcadero Marina Park South and a marina for 200 boats in National City. The company also has driven piles for the foundations of the San Diego Convention Center, waterfront hotels such as the Marriott, and worked on the Hilton Hotel under construction south of the convention center.

Carpenter also hopes to build a 20-story, 250-room hotel, dubbed the “Spinnaker,” with his partner, Art Engel. The project, slated for land Carpenter and his partner have leased from the San Diego Unified Port District directly behind the convention center and next to the old Rowing Club (aka the old Chart House then Joe’s Crab Shack restaurant), has stalled due to sharply increased construction costs.

Carpenter says the partners are working to trim expenses while maintaining the quality of the planned four-star hotel, but have no firm timeline for breaking ground.

“We think once it’s up it’s going to be a huge success, but the problem is it’s got to pencil out before you can construct something of this magnitude,” he says.

Meanwhile, R.E. Staite will keep afloat by adapting to a changing construction market and looking for waterfront work wherever it’s available, Carpenter says.

No doubt its prospects are strengthened by the reputations of both the company and its owner.

Tony Heinrichs, chief engineer for the Port District, which frequently contracts with R.E. Staite, says the company’s speedy response to a recent water main break on the Embarcadero demonstrates Carpenter’s can-do attitude. “They were right there when we needed them. That was basically just from a phone call asking for help. They were out there within hours,” says Heinrichs. “Ray Carpenter is a great guy. I really like doing business with him. He’s a straight shooter and his company has an excellent reputation with the port.”