Boat that took Steinbeck to Sea of Cortez is being restored
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. It now sits in a building at Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-op in Port Townsend, Washington. A crew is bringing her back to life, plank by plank, spike by spike, nail by nail.
When the $4 million to $5 million project is completed, the Western Flyer will be returned to Monterey, where it will become a floating scientific classroom. It will also make port calls along the West Coast. The boat is slated for completion sometime in 2020. The Western Flyer Foundation, Chase said, is hoping to return the boat the following year, on the 81st anniversary of the beginning of the Sea of Cortez expedition, which began March 11, 1940.
The Western Flyer has changed Chase’s life. He left his career as a partner in Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-op to become the restoration project director. That change occurred after becoming acquainted with John Gregg.
Gregg, a marine geologist and Steinbeck-Ricketts enthusiast, bought the Western Flyer from real estate developer Gary Kehoe for $1 million.
Kehoe had plans to disassemble the boat, bring it back to Salinas, reassemble it and place it in a hotel he planned to create in the former Dick Bruhn Building at 300 Main St. in Salinas (before the building was gutted by a fire in February 2016).
But Kehoe’s plans waned after the Western Flyer sank twice: Once in Anacortes, Washington, and again after it was towed to Port Townsend. It was raised by the U.S. Department of Natural Resources after being submerged for six months, and placed on land behind the co-op.
There it sat. The onceproud fishing vessel was reduced to a shadow of its former self. Its hull was encrusted with barnacles. Its interior was full of mud. Its planking was falling off. It was possible that the Department of Natural Resources would destroy the boat, because Kehoe was not paying his bills for berthing it on time, Chase said.
The boat was moved into the co-op’s building for restoration and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Chase came to Port Townsend from Boulder, Colorado, in 1988 to attend a wooden boat trade school. Since then he has spent his life working in several boatyards there. Eventually, he became a partner in Port Townsend Shipwrights Coop. The business specializes in boat restoration and repair.
“I fell in love,” he said. “I liked wood and I liked boats.”
In a telephone interview from Port Townsend, Chase talked about his love for the Western Flyer and its restoration.
Q: What were your thoughts when you first saw the Western Flyer?
A: I remember talking to one of my partners, and I said, “We’re going to restore that boat someday.” … My first impression was it was a ghostly ship and it needed to be saved. … It was a unique project, a unique boat.
Q: What was the first step in the restoration process?
A: The first real task was to evaluate it out of the weather. People scraped barnacles and got mud out before it was moved into the building. We wanted to find out what was the true condition of the boat. What parts were from when. Some were indecipherable. What was old and what was new?
We did a second cleaning and documented it with a digital scan. … We measured every piece of wood on the boat. The documentation and evaluation took about six months. … Then we went about building
a community of support. John (Gregg) wanted advice about what it means to be a foundation and how are we doing to do this? … We began developing a revenue stream (through the foundation).
Q: What else was involved in the documentation process?
A: The boatyard where it was built burned in 1952 in Tacoma (Washington). All records were lost. … We
got help from Ed Ricketts Jr. (son of Ed Ricketts) and (Monterey photo archivist) Pat Hathaway to get a catalog of historical information. … (Since there were no blueprints for the Western Flyer, the shipwrights created their own).
Q: Did you find anything surprising when you began to dig into the actual restoration?
A: The boat’s the boat. It was built in 1937. They built
hundreds of these boats. They’re all carbon copies (built) in the same order. After 30 years, they all rot in the same place and they all fall apart in the same place. … It’s a survivor. It sank three and a half times. It sank outside Ketchikan, Alaska, in 1971. It sank in Prince William Sound in the mid-1960s.
Q: What has been your most lasting impression of the project?
A: I think the eye-opening part for me was the community. … I pulled the boat out of the water and there was somebody standing there that wanted to see it. … I didn’t realize what it meant to so many people.
DETAILS » For more information on the Western Flyer and the Western Flyer Foundation, visit Info@WesternFlyer.org or call 949-903-6873.