Tag Archives: shipwright Pete Rust

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