the boat, as much as possible, but she
has to take big seas again, and that re-
quires a massive rebuild.” Roughly 30
percent of the boat will stay original,
including the galley, the bathroom, or
head, and the berths where Steinbeck
and the others slept. The remaining 70
percent of the boat is being replaced,
and it has proved surprisingly diffi cult
to fi nd suitable wood.
The old-growth forests of Douglas
fi r, which blanketed most of the Pacifi c
Northwest, and supplied the original
beams, have nearly all been cut down,
and the millions of new-growth Douglas
fi r trees are too young. “There aren’t ten
trees between here and Portland that
I’d put in a boat,” says Chase, referring
to Portland, Oregon, 200 forested miles
away. Instead, he has sourced Douglas
fi r and yellow cedar from Canada, white
oak from Kentucky, and sustainably
produced mahogany from Congo.
Vital to John Gregg’s vision for the
boat is a hybrid drive system with a
rechargeable electric motor, a remote-
ly operated underwater vehicle (ROV)
housed on deck, and a laboratory in the
old fi sh hold. These innovations will al-
ter the balance and physics of the boat,
and they’ve been criticized by purists,
who want the Flyer to resemble its orig-
inal self as closely as possible.
“This boat has an incredible magne-
tism,” says Chase. “At least a thousand
people have come here to see her, and
some of them are true pilgrims. ‘The
book changed my life,’ they say, and the
boat is the living embodiment of that
story. There was a guy from Sitka [Alas-
ka] in his 80s who was shaking with emo-
tion. ‘I can’t believe I’m walking on the
deck of the Western Flyer,’ he said. Peo-
ple have done séances here, and pinned
photographs of Steinbeck to the boat,
but I’d say nine out of ten people come
here because of Ricketts, not Steinbeck.”
Seven decades after his death at age
50 in 1948—the evening train from
San Francisco smashed into his car
on the railroad tracks in Monterey—
Ed Ricketts remains a beloved fi gure,
especially among marine biologists
and people in Monterey. His fans callThe Western Flyer
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