Tag Archives: F/V Western Flyer
The Western Flyer Returns Home to Monterey!
She’s coming home at last! After being away for 75 years, the historic Western Flyer—the sardine fishing boat immortalized by John Steinbeck’s 1951 classic The Log from the Sea of Cortez—will return to her home port of Monterey on Saturday, November 4th. “The Western Flyer was built for Monterey’s sardine fishery in 1937, and while it gained notoriety from its 1940 research trip with John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, it’s had a long and storied past as a fishing boat,” said marine geologist John Gregg, founder and board member of the Western Flyer Foundation. “Now restored with a hybrid diesel-electric engine and state-of-the-art marine lab, the Flyer symbolizes a bridge, linking Monterey’s commercial fishing heritage with its leadership in marine science and education.” When Gregg purchased the Western Flyer in 2015, the neglected 77-foot fishing vessel had sunk several times and was almost beyond repair. >>click to read<< 07:50
Despite Coronavirus pandemic, work continues on Western Flyer
Charged with leading the restoration efforts of the Western Flyer are of the Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-Op. Between the two are some 56 years of hands-on experience repairing, constructing, renovating and maintaining wooden boats. “This time last year, we were framing. There had been some structural work, some of the deck beams were put in, some of the longitudinal stringers, and some of the prep work for what was going to happen when we reframed, had been already done,” Lee said. Progress on the Western Flyer was chugging right along, Lee said, with consistent crews of eight to 10 staff working at any given time, now the project has been forced to drop down to about half its previous staffing. “With coronavirus we’re down to a crew of four, >click to read< 09:08
The Western Flyer – Restoration continues on historic boat made famous by Steinbeck book
It’s a story that keeps getting better as it is told. The Western Flyer fishing boat — made famous by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, who chartered it in 1940 for a marine biological collecting trip to the Sea of Cortez in Baja California — is being restored at Shipwrights Co-Op in Port Townsend, Washington. “The historic restoration is well underway,” said Chris Chase, project director for the Western Flyer Foundation, the parent organization for the project. “It’s alive. People are working every day. It smells fresh.” >click to read<09:18
Work ramps up on Western Flyer
Sitting in the pilot house of the Western Flyer, the fishing boat that John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts took down to the Sea of Cortez, shipwright Pete Rust is surrounded by history. He also is surrounded by a quandary. “The difficult thing I’m doing right now is trying to figure out how to remove the house from the boat without damaging it and without losing the original shape,” said Rust, a member of the Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-op, which is restoring the historic boat. The goal is to take the house off the boat and frame it on the floor to rebuild and restore it. But Rust has to figure out how to do that without the structure collapsing in on itself. >click to read<11:05
Steinbeck boat being restored – A crew is bringing her back to life, plank by plank, spike by spike, nail by nail.
Somewhere in the Western Flyer there is a spirit, said Chris Chase, project director for the Western Flyer Foundation, the nonprofit group restoring the fishing boat that carried Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck to The Sea of Cortez in 1940. “I don’t know who it is,” said the 51-year-old shipwright. “It could be Ed (Ricketts). It could be John Steinbeck. It could be Carol Steinbeck (John Steinbeck’s first wife).” Whoever it is, something has saved the 80-year-old, 77-foot purse seiner from destruction. >click here to read< 14:31
75 Years After Steinbeck Sailed, a Boat Is Readied to Go Back to Sea
Rule 1 in the world of working wooden boats, since the days of dugout canoes and fishing skiffs, has been that when they are no longer of use or they are lost at sea, people build new ones and move on. Sentimentality and fussy restoration are rarely in the tool kit. The Western Flyer, a sardine fishing boat made famous by the writer John Steinbeck, is now on a path to breaking that pattern, as it has so many others before. Seventy-five years after Steinbeck and a scientist friend chartered the Flyer and sailed it from California to Mexico — and into literary legend,,, Read the rest here 07:58
The Western Flyer is about to be uncloaked – getting $2 million renovation in Port Townsend
Three months after the beginning of a $2 million renovation to transform the battered hulk of a boat once used by author John Steinbeck into a floating science center, those working on the project are lifting the shroud of secrecy and allowing the public to look but not touch. “There have been no surprises on this project so far,” said Shipwrights Co-op member Chris Chase, who with Tim Lee is overseeing renovation expected to take 2½ years. “The biggest surprise is the level of public interest,” he said. Read the rest here 11:35
F/V Western Flyer, by some accounts the world’s most famous fishing vessel is at the center of a continuing controversy
The Western Flyer, built by Tacoma’s Western Boat Building Co. in 1937 on the Tideflats, acquired its literary and scientific patina in 1940 when author John Steinbeck and a friend, marine biologist Ed Ricketts, chartered the vessel for a six-week expedition to Mexico’s Gulf of California. The gulf is an arm of the Pacific Ocean sandwiched between the Baja peninsula and the mainland of Mexico. The gulf is more lyrically known as the Sea of Cortez. more@thenewstribune 07:42
