Steinbeck’s famous ‘Western Flyer’ sails back to Monterey after years of restoration
The original captain’s desk sits in the wheelhouse, where legendary author John Steinbeck may have jotted notes for his Log from the Sea of Cortez. A guy wire like the one he wrote would “sing under the wind,” stabilizes the mast. Nearby is the galley ventilator where “the odor of boiling coffee” soothed his senses.
Neglected, twice sunk and now painstakingly restored, the ‘Western Flyer’ — dubbed the world’s most famous fishing boat for bearing Steinbeck and his biologist friend Ed Ricketts on an ecological adventure — returns Saturday to Monterey for the first time in 75 years to begin a new life in science education.
Now docked at the Moss Landing harbor, the Western Flyer will be escorted to Monterey by a decorated boat parade, honoring an end-of-season fishing community celebration held the day before Steinbeck and Ricketts headed out on their journey. The event will include tours of the boat, activities and live music.
“We’re bringing it back for a big party,” said Sherry Flumerfelt, executive director of the Western Flyer Foundation, the nonprofit that owns and restored the boat, which it plans to use for science education programs for local students and marine research.
“The goal is just to continue what Steinbeck and Ricketts started, where we’re merging science and art,” Flumerfelt said. “You had this scientist who loved art and literature and this writer who loved science. These two were very interdisciplinary in their thinking.”
The wooden vessel, built in Tacoma, Wash. in 1937 for Monterey’s then-bountiful sardine fishery, became the setting for the 1941 Steinbeck and Ricketts collaboration Sea of Cortez, a journal about their specimen collecting trip to the Gulf of California. Steinbeck reworked the journal for his 1951 book, Log from the Sea of Cortez.
Marine science was in its infancy when Steinbeck and Ricketts — who inspired “Doc” in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, a “fountain of philosophy and science and art” — set off March 11, 1940, on their trip. A newspaper article at the time said they advised Mexican authorities they were “to evaluate and consider the way marine invertebrate animals occur along shore — their interlocking associations or societies in their relations to each other and to the environmental factors.”
That the vessel survived at all is nothing short of a miracle.
Tony Berry, the Monterey fisherman who skippered the boat during Steinbeck’s voyage to Mexico, continued to captain the ship until Monterey’s sardine fishery crashed in the late 1940s. The Flyer ended up with Seattle fisherman Dan Luketa who plied the Pacific for sole, perch, halibut, cod and crab. Inspired by space exploration, he rechristened the ship “Gemini” before selling it in 1970 for a bigger ship.
The boat passed through a series of fishing companies before being sold at auction in 1986 to Ole Knudson, who’d hoped to restore it. Meanwhile, Bob Enea, nephew of original skipper Berry, had been searching for the Flyer, and traced the ship to Knudson by its WB4044 call sign.
But Enea and his Western Flyer Project were unable to meet Knudson’s price as the ship sat moored in the Swinomish Channel, under road bridges near Anacortes, north of Seattle, rust-streaked with blue plastic tarps covering the deck. In 2011, an ambitious Salinas developer bought the boat for $45,000 with plans to use it as a showpiece for a planned hotel lobby.
But the following year, a hull plank gave way and the Gemini sank in the channel. It was patched and refloated two weeks later, but sank again in 2013 and stayed fully submerged for six months.
In 2015, marine geologist John Gregg, the Western Flyer Foundation founder who was inspired by reading Log from the Sea of Cortez as a boy, bought the waterlogged boat for $1 million and began what would become a $6 million, eight-year restoration of the 77-foot, barnacle-encrusted, mud-caked hulk.
Given its age and rough shape, the Port Townsend Shipwrights Cooperative that restored the Flyer had to replace almost 90% of the hull and 20% of the wheelhouse with new wood, which the foundation says was sustainably sourced. The restored Flyer has a few modern touches, including a hybrid-electric engine, modern electronic navigation equipment and soon, will sport a custom remote-operated vehicle.
For Gregg, reading Steinbeck’s Log as a 10-year-old was a revelation that science wasn’t just a bunch of dull men in white coats toiling at monotonous tasks in a lab but could involve “breathless adventure.”
“I realized it could be fun,” Gregg said as he strolled the refurbished Flyer this week.
He and his team have added whimsical touches in their restoration. On the main deck port side, an image of a sea turtle is inlaid with some of the boat’s original timber in the spot where an amusing passage in Steinbeck’s Log describes crewman Ratzi “Tiny” Colletto struggling to prepare a turtle for soup dinner.
The mast sports a set of deer antlers — said to be good luck — that Gregg’s father had hunted when he was a boy. At its base, in keeping with another nautical tradition, are two quarter coins, from 1937 and 2023, and a 1940 Mexican peso.
Stepping aboard the Flyer is a journey back in time, with some of the original paint on parts of the deckhouse, like the galley step, and original floorboards. Though the galley stove was lost, Gregg’s team found an identical one in storage at an appliance retailer — still in its original box — and installed it.
“The fact that the house is original and that’s where the people spent their time, that’s special to me,” Gregg said.
Perhaps in a year or so, Gregg said the Flyer will retrace its journey to the Sea of Cortez for a scientific project. In the meantime, the historic vessel will be busy inspiring a new generation of Steinbecks and Ricketts.
“I don’t want it to become a museum piece,” Gregg said. “To me, it’s important that the boat goes on and becomes something useful.”
Welcoming home the Western Flyer
The Western Flyer Foundation has lined up a day full of events Saturday to celebrate the fishing boat’s Nov. 4 return to Monterey.
- Monterey is opening up Pacific Biological Laboratories — Ed Ricketts’s Lab — at 800 Cannery Row for free tours 9-11 a.m. Nov. 4 and 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Nov. 5.
- Historian Tim Thomas gives a free walking tour of the Monterey waterfront 9:30 a.m. Nov. 4. Reservations required at timsardine@yahoo.com
- Homecoming party begins at 11 a.m. with free giveaways at Old Fisherman’s Wharf.
- Boat parade and Best Dressed Boat Contest judged by descendants of the 1940 crew from 11:30 a.m.-12 p.m.
- Welcoming Ceremony at Old Fisherman’s Wharf 12:30 p.m.
- Free Western Flyer tours 1:30-4 p.m.