Tag Archives: Western Flyer
Western Flyer sails again
The Western Flyer left for Seattle after seven years of intense restoration and rebuilding in Port Townsend, but she will make a detour on the way to her final destination for one last visit to the town that returned her to the ocean. The boat, known most famously as the vessel writer John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts chartered for a research trip to the Sea of Cortez in 1940, had been in Port Townsend undergoing restoration since 2015. On Wednesday, the Western Flyer embarked on stage two of its rehab when it was towed to Snow & Company boat builders in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. There, over the course of the next four or five months, it’ll get a new engine, rigging, hydraulics and mechanical systems. >click to read< 12:14
Western Flyer takes another step in restoration
The first phase of restoring the Western Flyer fishing boat is nearing completion in Port Townsend, Washington, The 76-foot purse seiner was chartered by author John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts for a biological collecting trip to the Sea of Cortez in 1940. The nonprofit Western Flyer Foundation plans to base the boat in Monterey and use it as a floating classroom for scientific studies. On Dec. 4 the cabin, or wheelhouse, of 
the Western Flyer was reattached. >click to read< ,,, From 2013, John Steinbeck boat rusts in Anacortes – Time has been less kind to the Western Flyer. The battered old tub, which has been called one of the most famous boats in American nonfiction, has sunk twice in the past six months and was still underwater off a dock in Anacortes as of two weeks ago. >click to read< For everything in between, >click here< 14:47
Righting John Steinbeck’s Storied Ship, Western Flyer Gets a Plank-by-Plank Restoration and Soul Re-Infusion
In 2013, the fishing vessel Gemini, a purse seiner built in 1937, was hauled up from the bottom of the Swinomish Channel in the Pacific Northwest. The event wouldn’t have drawn much attention had this old wooden fishing boat not had such a storied past. In 1940, the novelist John Steinbeck and his friend, marine biologist Ed Ricketts, chartered the sardine fisher under the name Western Flyer,,, Luckily, when the boat sank for what was the third (or maybe even fourth) time in her history, she was not far from Port Townsend, the Northwest’s hub of wooden-boat restoration. The Western Flyer soon found a home at the Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-Op, and her new owner started a nonprofit foundation to oversee an ambitious—and expensive—restoration project. >Video, photos, click to read< 20:19
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
Cannery Row history: Western Flyer puzzle takes shape
Revelations at the Cannery Row Symposium just keep getting better and better. Last year it was announced that the Western Flyer, the fishing boat leased by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts for their historic collecting trip to the Sea of Cortez, had been purchased and would be restored and returned to Monterey Bay as an educational classroom. At this year’s event, held Saturday at Hopkins Marine Station, the wheel from the fishing boat’s flying bridge and two compasses were displayed. It was also announced that the foundation has come into possession of Ricketts’ rolodex. The rolodex is two boxes of index cards that survived the fire that destroyed his business, Pacific Biological Laboratories, in 1936. It gives a broader picture of how the marine biologist was connected to scientists all over the world. But more on that later.,, Read the article here 14:46
The Western Flyer – known as the Gemini during her Homer fishing years
A phone call from former crew member Jim Herbert informed David and Dennis Fry that the boat they fished on in the 1970s with their father was the Western Flyer — the vessel on which author John Steinbeck took the expedition chronicled in the book, “The Log from the Sea of Cortez.” In an intriguing turn of the tide, Dennis Fry will speak at a symposium about the Western Flyer that will be live-streamed on YouTube on Saturday, April 16, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Alaska Daylight Time. To the Frys, the boat was the Gemini, David said. They knew a previous owner had changed the boat’s name from the Western Flyer, but they were unaware of the significance. Read the article here 16:48
A New Life for the Boat Immortalized by John Steinbeck
Sitting in dry-dock, covered in barnacles, is the Western Flyer, a piece of literary history that has been threatened by time, the sea, and a restauranteur. No more. “Some have said they have felt a boat shudder before she struck a rock, or cry when she beached and the surf poured into her. This is not mysticism, but identification; man, building this greatest and most personal of all tools, has in turn received a boat-shaped mind, and the boat, a man-shaped soul. His spirit and the tendrils of his feeling are so deep in a boat that the identification is complete.” John Steinbeck, The Log From the Sea of Cortez Read the rest here 15:44
John Steinbeck boat rusts in Anacortes
Time has been less kind to the Western Flyer. The battered old tub, which has been called one of the most famous boats in American nonfiction, has sunk twice in the past six months and was still underwater off a dock in Anacortes as of two weeks ago. Read more
